Discussions about a green economy usually centre on transforming the businesses we have to address the climate crisis without too much disruption. The phrase evokes images of solar panels, wind turbines, electric vehicles and maybe even new technology like carbon capture and storage. 

But right beneath our noses, there’s another sort of green economy already influencing where and how dollars flow: one based on conserving and restoring nature. Ecosystems left intact are worth money, even if we don’t always recognize it. And not addressing the climate crisis is also very expensive. 

For example, Ontario’s Greenbelt — a ring of protected farmland, forests and waterways encircling the Greater Toronto Area — generates $9.6 billion in economic activity per year, mostly from farming, recreation and tourism. It also supports 177,700 jobs, according to the charitable Greenbelt Foundation, and saves the province $224 million every year in natural flood protection. The money spent on restoration projects also ripple out into the local economy, providing both on-site jobs and a need for materials and supplies. 

As researchers and communities across Canada increasingly look to restoring landscapes as a way to tackle climate change, they’re also thinking about how to account for the value of natural assets. The issue is the subject of a new guide from the non-profit Natural Assets Initiative that came out this spring, outlining best practices for local governments looking to manage and protect the nature they have. 

Here’s a look at a few examples of how nature — kept as is, or being brought back to good health — is already making money move in southern Ontario. 

For about a century, the Don River in Toronto has drained into Lake Ontario through the artificial Keating Channel, which takes an unnatural 90-degree turn. Its construction harmed wildlife and raised the risk of flooding, so work is underway to fix it with a new river mouth and park space.

The billion-dollar restoration of the mouth of Toronto’s Don River 

At the mouth of the Don River, which flows into Lake Ontario on the east side of downtown Toronto, a massive push to correct a mistake that’s over a century old is nearly finished.

Hundreds of years ago, the place where the Don reached the lake was a great marsh, teeming with fish and migratory birds, absorbing water to mitigate floods and filtering whatever flowed through. As settlers urbanized what is now called Toronto in the 1800s, displacing Indigenous communities, they also dumped massive amounts of manure — at one point, 80,000 gallons (nearly 303,000 litres) per day — and sewage into the wetland. Before long, the rich biodiversity was gone and the marsh was a stinky public health risk, raising fears of cholera.

In the 1890s, the city dredged the northern edge of the marsh to create the Keating Channel, which would eventually re-route the Don River into an unnatural 90-degree turn into Toronto’s inner harbour. In the 1910s, the newly-created Toronto Harbour Commission decided to drain the marsh and fill it — with a mix of sand, gravel, clay and construction debris like glass, brick, concrete, wood and charcoal —  to create new land. It would be used for an industrial district in the Port Lands, leaving a legacy of contamination.

Settlers constructed the Keating Channel around the turn of the century. The new, renaturalized mouth of the Don River is now taking shape just south of the channel, which will remain where it is, giving the river two outlets into Lake Ontario.

These decisions came with steep consequences not just for wildlife and biodiversity, but also for floods and people. With the flood-mitigation properties of the marsh lost and the river taking an unnatural path, heavy rains and snowmelt began running over into roads and neighbourhoods near the river. The costliest was July 2013, when an intense storm made rivers spill into basements and onto roadways, leaving drivers to wade through waist-high water. In the Don Valley, 1,400 passengers were stranded on a water-filled train for hours — a video of the incident showed a snake sliding between the seats, and they eventually had to be rescued in inflatable boats. The disaster cost $1 billion in insured damage. Similar events are set to happen more often and more intensely as the effects of climate change worsen. 

Governments started working on a plan to re-naturalize the mouth of the Don in 2005, a process that inched along until construction began in 2017. It includes a more natural opening for the river, which means the Don will now have two paths to drain into Lake Ontario. It also includes a new 1.3-kilometre river valley to act as a floodplain, and new wetlands, both of which will absorb more water and naturally filter it. The green space will include over two million plants. In the end, the hope is that the area will be a hub for outdoor recreation and the site of a future neighbourhood. 

Illustration: Shawn Parkinson / The Narwhal

It’s an enormous construction project with a price tag to match: $1.354 billion, just over both its original budget of $1.25 billion and the cost of cleaning up the 2013 floods. All three levels of government — the City of Toronto, the province and the federal government — pitched in. 

Waterfront Toronto estimates the project will contribute $4 billion to the Canadian economy and create jobs for up to 30,000 people. It also says the work will save even more money by preventing or lessening future flood events.

Earlier this year, water began flowing into the new river valley. It’s set to be connected to Lake Ontario later in 2024, as long as a leak in one of the plugs separating the bodies of water doesn’t derail the process. Work is ongoing in the Port Lands, which still look like a barren construction zone. It’s set to open in spring 2025, about a year later than its original target.

All told, the restoration work around the mouth of the Don River has a price tag of $1.354 billion. Waterfront Toronto estimates it will contribute about three times that to the Canadian economy.

How much is a creek in southern Ontario worth? Turns out, a lot 

Nature has inherent value, but how does that translate into actual money? Hamilton, Burlington and the Conservation Halton aimed to answer that question in 2022 by settling on a dollar figure for the worth of Grindstone Creek, a watershed that winds through those municipalities, west of Toronto. The creek flows through the Royal Botanical Gardens in Burlington and a bit of the Greenbelt, before emptying into Hamilton Harbour. 

The local governments teamed up with the non-profit Natural Assets Initiative on the project, along with the Royal Botanical Gardens, Conservation Halton and the Greenbelt Foundation. In the end, the groups concluded Grindstone Creek provides $2 billion of value every year just by lowering local flood risk. If the watershed were to vanish, it would cost that much to replace its absorption and filtering functions with human-made infrastructure. The report used a body of existing research to pin down the rough value per square metre of various habitat types for stormwater management: $65 for forests, $200 for swamps, $203 for marshes and $324 for open water.  

The $2 billion figure doesn’t include all of the creek’s costs or value. Maintaining natural ecosystems isn’t free, the report notes, though it generally costs more to maintain constructed infrastructure. Ontario municipalities pay an average of $3 billion per year to maintain stormwater pipes, ditches and culverts, according to a 2022 report from Ontario’s arms-length Financial Accountability Office, and climate change is expected to magnify that number over time. 

Grindstone Creek runs through the Royal Botanical Gardens in Hamilton. In 2022, a report concluded the creek provided $2 billion in value every year. Photo: Focused 001 / Flickr

Plus, the group found, Grindstone Creek delivers another $34 million in benefits every year thanks to the role it plays in recreation, habitat biodiversity, lessening air pollution, controlling heat waves, mitigating the effects of climate change and erosion control — Burlington is budgeting $300,000 to create a new, vegetated bank on another creek to prevent erosion there.

The figures aren’t a perfect or complete picture, but they can help governments make decisions about how to use and conserve nature, the groups said. 

“Although we can’t reduce nature to a simple dollar figure, this shows the enormous financial value of services communities are getting from nature,” Roy Brooke, the executive director of the Natural Assets Initiative, said in a press release announcing the findings.

“Protecting these assets avoids taxpayers getting stuck with a far higher bill to replace services that nature gives us already.”

Recreation and shipping on the Great Lakes are already huge drivers of economic activity in the region.

The cost-benefit ratio of restoring Great Lakes ecosystems

The Ontario government pours millions of dollars, year after year into conserving and restoring Great Lakes ecosystems. Back in 2010, the province’s Environment Ministry commissioned a study looking at the economic benefits of those investments, and whether they were panning out. 

The report focused on three groups of watersheds around Lake Ontario: the Credit River and 16 Mile Creek west of Toronto, the area around the city itself and Prince Edward Bay to the east. The benefits of securing and restoring land far outweighed the costs, the researchers found. The extent of that varied by area — the benefits of restoring wetlands, for example, were significantly higher in Toronto, where there are few natural wetlands left and a high population, than in less-developed Prince Edward Bay. 

The most significant finding, the report said, was that “there are positive economic returns on restoration and protection” of all the habitat types studied. 

South of the border, the United States Environmental Protection Agency just published the results of an audit examining whether the US$3.7 billion it has put towards restoring habitats around the Great Lakes was money well spent. It was mostly a success, the audit found: the funds went to groups whose efforts helped protect habitats, cut pollution and tackle invasive species. The main downside was the work didn’t benefit everyone — very few of those groups prioritized environmental justice, or making sure their efforts helped marginalized communities who disproportionately suffer the effects of pollution and climate change. 

The benefits of restoring Great Lakes ecosystems generally outweigh the costs, according to a 2010 study commissioned by the Ontario government.

The 2010 provincial report warned its findings should be taken with a grain of salt given its scope was limited to a few areas and ways of measuring monetary benefit. The body of research used to assign value to nature has grown in the years since — the new guide from the Natural Assets Initiative for assessing the value of ecosystems includes more, and more complex factors, such as how connected animals’ habitats are to other natural areas, or the diversity of species living there. Both things can be used as an indicator of how well an ecosystem is functioning, and therefore, how much monetary value it holds. 

What hasn’t changed is an observation made in the 2010 report — the Great Lakes hold another kind of inherent value, one that comes from the knowledge that their ecosystems will be protected for future generations. 

“People have demonstrated willingness-to-pay to protect or improve areas that are of no direct use to them, simply for the benefit derived from knowing these areas exist in their natural ecological state,” the report said.

Updated June 28, 2024 at 4:05 p.m. ET: This article was updated to correct the name of the Natural Assets Initiative.

Updated July 25, 2024 at 2:20 p.m. ET: This article was updated to correct that Conservation Halton, not the Regional Municipality of Halton, was involved in the effort to assess the value of Grindstone Creek.

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.

Across Ontario, there are municipalities that want natural gas and don’t have it. Others have it, but crave a future less dependent on fossil fuels. 

The common denominator is Enbridge, an energy behemoth that wants to keep both kinds of Ontario municipalities on its balance sheet. 

But their relationship is increasingly complicated.

For more than 70 years, the $50-billion Calgary-based private company has held a monopoly on natural gas distribution in Ontario. Enbridge delivers the methane-heavy fuel — one of Ontario’s cheapest and last remaining fossil fuel-based sources of energy — through its network of pipelines that crisscross the province, heating three-quarters of homes. 

But the onset of the climate emergency — and the need to move away from fossil fuels — has posed an existential threat to Enbridge, the likes of which it has never experienced. Just as mobile phones replaced the landline, cheap energy from wind, water and sun threaten to replace natural gas and other fossil fuels that create greenhouse gas emissions and exacerbate global heating. 

“Enbridge is fighting for its survival,” Jay Shepherd, an energy lawyer, said in an interview. “They’re in this sort of death spiral. The people in Enbridge understand that Enbridge is not going to look the way it looks today 10 or 20 years from now.” 

The company is doing everything possible to delay the inevitable, Shepherd said. This includes small investments in cleaner energy sources that are still being developed and evaluated, like hydrogen and “renewable” natural gas, which is methane captured from organic waste. But it mostly means doubling down on natural gas infrastructure at the local level. 

Enbridge has long tried to influence towns and cities to use natural gas, and has been publicly asking councils across Ontario to support its expansion plans. Photo: Carrie Davis / The Narwhal / The Local

Since the beginning of the year, Enbridge Gas, the company’s natural gas subsidiary, has been publicly asking local councils across Ontario — in Toronto, Hamilton, Ottawa, Kingston, Guelph, Whitby, Niagara Region, Grey Highlands, Durham, Severn, Prince Edward County and dozens more — to support its natural gas expansion plans for the rest of this decade. That’s the same decade within which many of these municipalities have committed to achieving significant climate action. Enbridge has long tried to influence towns and cities to stay on or expand their use of natural gas, but its latest efforts seem like a full-scale defence of a fossil-dependent business model, even as both sentiments and technologies shift elsewhere. 

To understand this latest approach and the recent history of Enbridge’s influence, The Narwhal and The Local reviewed several hundred pages of documents filed at the Ontario Energy Board, and letters sent to local councils. Over the last three months, we also spoke to 22 people who work in and with Ontario’s energy sector. That includes five former Enbridge employees and multiple municipal staff, local councillors, energy officials and lawyers. Almost all requested confidentiality, citing fear of professional retribution as their ongoing work includes continued engagement with Enbridge. Because of this, we have used single pseudonyms throughout this story for those who asked not to be named publicly. The Narwhal and The Local have verified each person’s identity and position.

Collectively, their first hand accounts and analysis illustrate the lengths Enbridge has gone to in order to boost natural gas. The company has financially supported municipalities in developing energy plans and sponsored events such as town halls and council meetings to discuss them with the public. It has given municipalities money to help research new energy solutions, and paid for studies and marketing material that stress the importance of natural gas. And, according to sources, the company has directly intervened in apparent attempts to silence and stymie opposition from municipal staff and environmental experts across Ontario. 

The Ontario Energy Board tried to prevent Enbridge from charging customers for new connections to natural gas, but was overruled by the Doug Ford government. Photo: Christopher Katsarov Luna / The Narwhal

In one example found in filings at the Ontario Energy Board, Enbridge Gas tried to discredit criticisms made by officials at City of Ottawa — which has an energy transition plan that requires it to move away from natural gas to achieve net zero — about the company’s lack of meaningful municipal engagement on an aging pipeline. In detailed arguments, the company said the city’s submissions were “incomplete or inaccurate” and “strategically filed” to impact Enbridge’s expansion plans. Enbridge Gas told the board it had “actively participated, in good faith, on a number of fronts” with the City of Ottawa to “further progress on energy and climate change issues.” (The board sided with the city and denied the project.)

In a statement to The Narwhal and The Local, Enbridge spokesperson Leanne McNaughton added the company “work[s] closely” with over 312 Ontario municipalities, “prioritizing their energy needs and collaborating to advance their climate-action goals.” 

“Our unwavering commitment to these stakeholders is demonstrated through various activities such as sharing crucial information, conducting impactful meetings to discuss projects and presenting at municipal councils,” McNaughton wrote. 

On the surface, much of what sources described to The Narwhal and The Local falls within the realm of lobbying — a regular practice in Canada’s political system that sees business, special-interest and advocacy organizations attempt to solicit or sway policies and practices. But often, private interests are in deep tension with the public interest. In Enbridge’s case, the question is whether pursuing profits from the continued use of fossil fuels aligns with domestic and international pledges to limit global warming and mitigate the worst impacts of the climate emergency. 

“They’re a big company; big companies have power,” Shepherd said. And in his opinion, “They’re fighting a losing battle. But it may well be true that they can stave it off for a little while by being very effective as lobbyists.” 

“But in the end, individual people — your kids, my kids, the next generation — are going to make choices and these choices are not going to be fossil fuels,” he said. Enbridge, Shepherd said, is “just buying time.” 

And its clock has started ticking a lot faster of late — a countdown bringing Enbridge’s relationship with municipalities to the fore. 

“I think Enbridge is scared,” Henry, a staff member at an urban Ontario municipality, said in an interview. “Enbridge refers to the Ontario gas distribution business as their ATM. Right now, everybody is on gas, but soon people will start going off it. That’ll start to bite [Enbridge] because all of a sudden what’s profitable will no longer be.” 

“And whether we like it or not, we’re all going to feel Enbridge’s pain at least for a little while.” 

Ontario municipalities caught between energy regulator, energy company and energy minister

In Ontario, all energy companies are obligated to work with both municipalities and the Ontario Energy Board to deliver electricity and heat to residents. The board is an independent regulator mandated to ensure the natural gas and electricity industries are operating in a way that is financially responsible and in the public interest.Enbridge has to secure agreements with a city or town before building new natural gas infrastructure. Such accords span decades and give Enbridge leave to construct and maintain pipelines, and share its costs with municipalities and residents alike. 

“Enbridge is good at giving money here and there to keep relationships sweeter,” Henry said in an interview. “Anything under $100,000 here or there is chump change for them, with big benefits: it gets them goodwill and stops municipalities from being pointy-headed.” 

One way Enbridge secures these agreements is by sending a specialized team to municipalities to engage in discussions about, and negotiate and advocate for, natural gas. This team falls under Enbridge’s conservation department, but its job is to ensure the expansion of natural gas. “These Enbridge employees are strongly incented to get results,” William, a former municipal energy official, said in an interview. 

In 2020, Enbridge formed a specialized team that engages municipalities in discussions about natural gas and advocates for its continued use and expansion. Illustration: Shawn Parkinson / The Narwhal. Photo: Christopher Katsarov Luna / The Narwhal

According to business plans filed at the Ontario Energy Board in 2021, Enbridge set up this team in 2020 with an administrative budget of $1.66 million “in an effort to further support” a growing number of municipalities that were creating or implementing climate change and energy plans. Enbridge told the board that almost a quarter of the province’s 444 municipalities were “seeking the kind of leadership and financial support from Enbridge Gas that would lead to broader and deeper partnerships to lower energy costs and reduce energy use and [greenhouse gas] emissions.” 

To build these relationships, Enbridge began delivering information sessions on how to create plans that would achieve climate targets. It helped municipalities collect data and test new technology. And the company provided funding for local governments to “offset” the costs of creating and implementing climate and energy plans. 

“Recognizing the essential role of municipalities in shaping and advancing climate action, Enbridge Gas has established a dedicated team of specialists to support these initiatives,” McNaughton said in an email to The Narwhal and The Local when asked about the team. “We are committed to emission reduction action.”

Over the next few years, the company expanded the team in size and budget. In 2022, the company posted a job for a “senior advisor, municipal energy solutions,” who would need to “advocate for the continued use of natural gas and its role as a low carbon option in the development of municipal energy plans” — even though the use of the methane-heavy fuel contributes significantly to global heating. The advisor would also have to “communicate internally key threats identified through interactions with municipalities and assist in developing solutions to offset these threats.”

“Once you get a community tied into an agreement, they could never leave,” William said. 

“It became a de facto process that muted any municipal fights over the need for natural gas,” George, a former Enbridge employee, said in an interview. In fact, the only way a community can exit such an agreement is if the Ontario Energy Board, an independent regulator, allows it. 

To date, the board has not done so. 

Last year, the southwestern Ontario municipality of Leamington was denied when it asked the board not to renew its agreement with Enbridge for another 20 years. Documents show the municipality said it was “being forced” by Enbridge to enter a new agreement it “objects” to, which required Leamington to bear a significant portion of the cost of relocating gas systems, particularly when needed to maintain municipal drains. Enbridge, which has been the sole gas supplier for Leamington since 1889, countered that if the relocation costs weren’t split upfront, the company would have to pass them on to consumers. Because of this, the board decided the agreement had to be renewed “in the public interest.” Leamington lost an attempt to appeal in March. 

For Enbridge, these long-term agreements are important because the company only makes money when buildings are connected to its infrastructure. And it makes money whether or not gas is used. “If they have a connection that is only used during a blackout once every 10 years but sees the user pay monthly costs for that connection … well, the value of that is still high,” Phillip, an energy utility official, said in an interview. “The value becomes diminished when you start to tell people there is an alternative and they don’t need natural gas infrastructure. If you’re not expanding in the utility world, you’re dying.” 

That’s the blow the Ontario Energy Board delivered to Enbridge last fall. 

In October 2022, the board took on what would become one of the largest and most consequential cases in its 64-year history: a review of Enbridge Gas’s plans up to 2030 in light of the energy transition needed to curb climate impacts. To ensure fairness and fiscal responsibility, energy companies submit business plans to the board for review every few years.

In Enbridge’s case, the board spoke to nearly three dozen stakeholders and reviewed thousands of pages about Enbridge’s plans to generate more than $16 billion in revenue, much of which would be made from continuing to charge Ontario homeowners for new connections to natural gas.

Enbridge’s plans to generate more than $16 billion in revenue by 2030 rely on continuing to charge Ontario homeowners for new connections to natural gas. Photo: Christopher Katsarov Luna / The Narwhal

As part of its review, the board questioned whether or not natural gas should be the assumed future of energy in Ontario — and decided otherwise. In a stunning decision released last December, two out of three commissioners on the review panel said the company could no longer charge Ontario homeowners for new natural gas connections. The board argued that since climate commitments would render gas pipelines useless, it was unfair to charge customers for infrastructure with an expiry date. The board said these costs would have to be paid upfront by developers or Enbridge itself.

The decision shook the entire industry. A mere 15 hours after its release, the Doug Ford government vowed to overrule the independent Ontario Energy Board with legislation that would allow Enbridge to charge customers for new hookups for 40 more years. The province also pledged to weaken the board’s oversight power. Legislation cementing both moves passed last month. 

By Enbridge’s estimate, the board’s decision could have wiped out $300 million of revenue this year and billions of dollars over the next five years — an impact government staff weighed heavily in internal discussions. 

It could also have effectively ended the era of natural gas in Ontario. 

Enbridge Gas responds to regulator ruling with missives to municipalities

George, the former Enbridge employee, said the Ontario Energy Board “went for the jugular” with its decision to shift the cost of natural gas hookups off of consumers — and the company responded in kind. 

“Enbridge has been lobbying for itself for forever. Of course, as a business, it wants to keep it going,” George said. “The board’s decision meant Enbridge now had to fight for its life.”

Weeks after the decision, Enbridge Gas began sending city councils across Ontario letters asking that they support the Ford government’s legislation — a move one rural deputy mayor called “a blanket public relations effort.” 

“We just have differences in views of what our city’s energy transition looks like,” a City of Toronto official said regarding its discussions with Enbridge about natural gas. Illustration: Shawn Parkinson / The Narwhal / The Local

“Enbridge Gas consistently provides municipalities across Ontario with detailed updates on several items that may impact energy services provided to their communities,” company spokesperson McNaughton said in an email. These updates included information about Enbridge’s board submissions and the government’s legislation to overrule the board, she said, “recognizing the impact of these developments on the future of Ontario’s economic development, competitiveness and emissions reduction goals.” 

The Narwhal and The Local reviewed a dozen of Enbridge’s letters to municipalities, which were publicly posted as part of city council agendas. Each followed a template, slightly amended to reference local energy challenges and plans. Each was also tailored to include Enbridge’s local investments, which support energy expansions but also “greenhouses, grain dryers, industrial parks and any new businesses or housing developments seeking access to natural gas,” according to one letter sent to several municipalities.  

“Enbridge is effectively using municipalities as pawns,” Kent Elson, an energy lawyer who represents advocacy group Environmental Defence at the Ontario Energy Board, said in an interview. “They are using municipalities to impact policy and using municipal residents to grow their system … And they’re in hyperdrive because they’re scared for their life.”

Enbridge sent a version of this letter to several city councils, asking mayors and local politicians to help ensure the continued expansion of natural gas in their communities. Illustration: Fatima Syed / The Narwhal / The Local8

In its letters to rural municipalities, which often have an insufficient energy supply and limited energy expertise on staff, Enbridge reiterated each community’s need for natural gas. In April, Enbridge wrote to Grey Highlands, for example, and promised to deliver an expanded gas pipeline in return for the council’s support before the board. According to Geoff Shea, West Grey councillor, “the letter had this tone of aggression, which I thought was inappropriate.” 

“It didn’t seem level-headed or responsible,” he said in an interview.  

“Traditionally, having natural gas come to your town means your community is being taken more seriously by the powers-to-be because it’s a thing grown-up towns have,” Shea said. “But [in the letter], they made it seem like we were lucky to be getting natural gas. They were acting with a sense of entitlement.” 

In its letter to Toronto city council, Enbridge argued the board’s December 2023 decision would increase the cost of housing and put aspects of the city’s climate plan “at risk” — even though the same plan demands the city rapidly move its buildings away from natural gas. 

“It was the first instance I’ve seen where a utility has weighed in, in that nature,” James Nowlan, the City of Toronto’s executive director of environment and climate change since 2022, said in an interview. “But it did not influence our work or our assessment of [the Ford government’s legislation overruling the energy board] or our advice to council.” 

In a letter to the City of Toronto, Enbridge argued that natural gas infrastructure is crucial for the city to meet its climate and development goals. Illustration: Fatima Syed / The Narwhal / The Local

“We have a difference of general opinion with Enbridge,” Nowlan said. He explained that the city does work closely with Enbridge, which sits on Toronto’s climate advisory group and provides natural gas to many residents. But the city is also heavily focused on moving away from natural gas, something mandated for new buildings in Toronto’s net-zero strategy, called TransformTO.

“We have expressed all this to Enbridge,” Nowlan said. “They understand the city’s position. We just have differences in views of what our city’s energy transition looks like.”

Several municipal sources who spoke to The Narwhal and The Local noted the same disconnect. Enbridge’s message to municipalities after the Ontario Energy Board tried to prevent new connection charges was a wide-ranging, pointed insistence that natural gas is still great and still needed. 

A flyer sent by Enbridge Gas to Ontario residents about an Ontario Energy Board decision that would prevent Enbridge from charging customers, instead of developers, for new natural gas hookups. Source: Enbridge Gas

“The stakes are high,” Maline Giridhar, vice-president of regulatory and business development at Enbridge Gas, wrote in the letter to municipalities. “It is critical to realize that the affordability of a system that ensures Ontarians have the heat they require, and that businesses have the energy they need is in jeopardy by the [Ontario Energy Board’s] decision.” 

Giridhar reminded municipalities how cheap and useful natural gas is — “it provides twice the energy of electricity at a quarter of the cost on an annual basis” — without mentioning its harms. She wrote the company is “committed to achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions” without offering details on how. She also said the loss of revenue from the board’s decision “will lead to difficult investment choices” — which seemed like a reminder of the financial support municipalities receive from Enbridge for energy planning and other community-based support. The Narwhal and The Local asked an Enbridge spokesperson what it meant by “difficult investment choices” but did not receive a response.  

“Constraining access to natural gas through a reduction in capital will significantly limit the future development of essential energy infrastructure vital to Ontario’s economy, from which all Ontarians benefit,” Giridhar wrote in the letter. “As local leaders across the province, your voice matters, and we encourage you to take action.” 

Ontario municipalities are split over the future of natural gas for residents but agree that it will stay in the interim. Photo: Carrie Davis / The Narwhal / The Local

Lawyer Shepherd reiterates several times that, unlike most Ontario energy utilities, the energy giant is a private company. “We should not expect Enbridge to act in the public interest. That’s not what they do,” he said. “They act in the interests of their shareholders. And if they need to be a bully to do that, they will absolutely be a bully.” 

Several local officials who spoke to The Narwhal and The Local confidentially were quick to note that Enbridge’s lobbying — aggressive and influential as it might be — does not eliminate municipalities’ agency to make decisions about the future of energy in their community. A new report released this month shows that between 2013 and 2022, Ontario saw the largest increase among provinces of residents paying for natural gas expansion. But there may be a shift happening. Many cities and towns, starting with Hamilton in February, have passed resolutions supporting the Ontario Energy Board’s decision and opposing the provincial government’s move against it. On the other hand, several big rural municipalities still seeking natural gas have voted the opposite. Underlining this split is a universal concern about providing affordable electricity to Ontarians, particularly for home heating, while also considering the climate, cost and energy concerns of future generations. 

The letters have cast a slight chill on local energy planning, sources say. Where there was once a lot of chatter about moving away from natural gas in Ontario, there are now whispers. Insiders say Enbridge’s power maintains a stronghold — for now, anyway. 

“Our voice does matter,” said one rural deputy mayor. “But it’s hard to be heard when the voice at the other side of the table is an energy giant worth billions of dollars.” 

“We can’t not talk to them,” the deputy mayor added. “It’s more challenging than saying ‘thank you, next.’ We have to maintain an ongoing relationship and discussion because, for better or worse, Enbridge is going to be here for a long time even if their role is the distribution of something we’re trying to eliminate from our cities as fast as possible.” 

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.

Shahwali Wali is convinced that in a decade’s time, he and his neighbours will have disappeared from The Junction.

Since 1995, Wali has owned Dupont Auto Repair on the corner of Dundas and Dupont Streets in west Toronto, at the heart of a cluster of independent auto shops scattered within a kilometre of one another. Many of these shops are run by first-generation immigrants: Wali moved to Canada from Afghanistan in 1984, first working at restaurants and in construction before buying his own garage. When I first visited Dupont Auto Repair on a bright April afternoon, Wali was attending to paperwork behind a wide, cluttered desk in the shop’s office. The air was warm, faintly smelling of metal, gasoline and old paper. From the adjoining garage, the ambient din of mechanical work broke occasionally when staff members dressed in grease-stained coveralls poked their head into the office with a question or an update. 

There was a time when Wali’s shop largely serviced taxis in need of repairs — he jointly ran a fleet of taxis and still does today, though in fewer numbers. Orange-and-turquoise Beck taxis were parked in various states of repair, their engine guts splayed open across his front lot. But as taxis became less ubiquitous and less profitable, he’s had to diversify his clientele. Having been in this industry for nearly three decades, Wali can recognize a threat to business when he sees it. And the rise of electric vehicles could spell trouble.

It’s not because traditional mechanics, familiar with the ins and outs of combustion engines, don’t know how to fix them, Wali says.

“Right now, with these electric cars, the dealers have the equipment, they have the parts. They want to get the business and also fix the cars,” he explains. In his experience, and that of other mechanics The Local and The Narwhal visited, electric vehicle dealers and manufacturers are charging independent mechanics more and taking longer to supply parts than they do with gas vehicles. This incentivizes customers to go straight to the dealer when they need repairs. 

“They’re taking business away from small brokers, because the parts are not available, and we don’t have the equipment [we need],” he says. “Anything they charge you, you have no choice.”

Many independent mechanics like Wali, who have weathered the ever-evolving automotive landscape — including innovations in technology and software, and increasing automation — are eager to service electric vehicles, as are colleges and universities, which are increasingly making the study of electric vehicles a mandatory part of their automotive curriculum. With the federal government’s highly ambitious deadlines for a national transition to zero-emissions vehicles, the automotive service industry must embrace electrification or perish.

But in both the regulatory and commercial arena, electric vehicle manufacturers and independent aftermarket (that is, repair and resale) businesses are wrestling over the “right to repair” principle — the right of consumers and independent shops to affordably access the tools or information needed to fix and prolong the life of an object after it’s purchased. In a sector of the automotive industry that is still relatively young and underregulated, mechanics fear being shut out by manufacturers and dealerships that see a lucrative opportunity to establish virtually exclusive access to electric vehicle repairs.

If manufacturers win the fight over government regulation of the industry, it’ll be consumers and smaller businesses paying the price. Whether these mom-and-pop garages find ways to adapt, or stick to servicing combustion engines exclusively or decide it’s not worth the cost and effort to stay in this difficult business, the outcome will reshape the automotive landscape of the city, affecting both their clients and the workforce holding up these independent shops.

Shahwali Wali has owned Dupont Auto Repair on the corner of Dundas and Dupont Streets in Toronto since 1995. With the transition to electric vehicles, the future of his shop is as uncertain as it has ever been.

When Wali first bought the site that became Dupont Auto Repair in 1995, it was a propane and gas station, where his customers and fleet of taxis filled up on cheap propane at the height of its popularity as a fuel source. But when propane fell out of favour, Wali and his brother shuttered the gas station portion of the shop to focus on auto repairs and taxis. Then, Uber came along and overnight, taxis plummeted in value. Electric vehicles present a more gradual change to the market: uptake by Canadians is slow, and the rate of electric vehicle manufacturing within the country is lower than the global average, outpaced by both major manufacturers like China and smaller countries like Slovakia.

But late last year, the federal government passed the Canadian Electric Vehicle Availability Standard, a set of new regulations that, among other things, decree that 100 per cent of the new cars sold in Canada by 2035 should be zero-emission vehicles. The goal aligns with targets in the U.K., European Union and 17 U.S. states.

Such a colossal transition is unlikely to happen, though, unless several factors align.

First, the rate of Canadian electric vehicle manufacturing needs to rise, as does consumer interest in electric vehicles, buoyed by federal and provincial purchase incentives. Last year, zero-emission vehicle purchases accounted for a record high of 10 per cent of all car buys nationwide. But sales threaten to plateau since the market has already captured most Canadian car buyers who have the means and the climate-driven motivation to go electric. Electric vehicles are expensive: a city report in 2022 noted that EV uptake has been mostly in high-income midtown Toronto communities like the York Mills-Don Valley area, and wealthy parts of Etobicoke. And despite touting electric vehicle manufacturing as the shining future of Ontario, Premier Doug Ford scrapped the province’s $14,000 per vehicle rebate when elected in 2018. 

Second, the infrastructure to charge electric vehicles needs to be more widely available, especially outside wealthy enclaves in major cities. Toronto currently has 1,700 public electric vehicle chargers available, and aims to have more than 10,000 in total by 2030. But investments by the federal government are lagging. 

Finally, an often-ignored piece of the puzzle: electric vehicles need to be easier and more affordable to repair. Once an electric vehicle has left the dealership, that’s the biggest question on the owner’s mind — how to keep it running, and avoid costly repairs. Engineers predict that in the coming years, improvements to electric vehicle technology could increase longevity significantly, but that lifespan is only made possible by good maintenance. It’s not common for electric vehicles to break down just a few years after coming off the assembly line, but it’s also not impossible.

Batteries are the biggest challenge; they are currently immensely difficult to repair or recycle. Occasionally, you’ll see a horror story in the media: a Mississauga man who waited a year for a battery replacement on his Nissan Leaf, all the while shelling out for gas in his courtesy rental car; a Vancouver man whose Hyundai Ioniq 5’s battery casing was scratched, voiding the warranty and leading to a $60,000 quote to replace the battery, $10,000 more than the purchase price of the car. Across the U.S. and U.K., as well, insurers are increasingly writing off electric vehicles for damage to batteries that are essentially deemed irreplaceable, regardless of the condition of the rest of the car. One U.K. insurance provider, John Lewis Financial Services, has ceased insuring electric vehicles because of the costs involved. 

The transition to zero-emissions vehicles has been marketed as one of the key solutions to the climate crisis, but this will only hold true if the means by which electric vehicles are manufactured and maintained are sustainable in the long term. Electric vehicle batteries are more emissions-intensive to produce than combustion engines because of the effort involved in mining rare earth minerals for the batteries (to say nothing of the health and human rights concerns associated with prolonged exposure to mining materials like cobalt and manganese, or how Canada’s critical minerals rush could clash with Indigenous Rights). Depending on the means by which you get your electricity — from hydro or fossil fuel sources like coal — it could take anywhere from six months to five years, respectively, to ‘break even’ on the greenhouse gas toll of your electric vehicle, according to Reuters. Without affordable and accessible means to repair malfunctioning, damaged or aging electric vehicles, the manufacturing emissions are hard to justify. How far back does it set our climate goals to write off fixable cars as unrecyclable scrap?

The industry is split between those who buy the manufacturer rationales for restricting access to parts and data, and those who don’t. James Chow owns Car House Auto Centre, a sleek, renovated auto shop on an industrial roadway off Yonge Street in Richmond Hill. The area is a hub for mechanics — I counted a dozen in a 100-metre radius. Chow is the second generation in his family to work in the industry. His parents, who immigrated from Hong Kong, opened an auto shop in Markham in 1996, after his father spent years as a Canadian Tire technician. With little business acumen and significant barriers — his mother only spoke Cantonese — they built up a clientele by word of mouth. 

Today, hip hop booms through the garage in Chow’s shop, where cars are packed into the work space, one raised five feet off the ground to reveal its underside. When I first spoke with Chow, he’d just returned from an annual auto conference in Nashville, buzzing about the right-to-repair movement unfolding in the U.S. Right now, electric vehicles make up about one in every 10 repairs in his shop. Most of Chow’s clients are repeat customers. This is intentional: he accepts new customers based on whether they’re likely to become long-term clients. 

And he knows how to spot an electric vehicle that’s more trouble than it’s worth.

Since his shop is unaffiliated with Tesla, Chow explains, access to parts and diagnostic data is limited. Electric vehicle manufacturers often cite data privacy concerns as a reason not to share important vehicle data with third parties, including mechanics who need it to run diagnostic tests on failing cars. Tesla also charges him retail price for its parts, unlike the wholesale prices he gets from outfits like Honda or Hyundai, for example, where discounts or price cuts are built into the dealer’s business model with after-market shops. “And [Tesla] wouldn’t have a delivery service, so we’re paying to get it shipped to us. With other dealers, they would deliver to us, and we would get a 20 to 30 per cent discount on every part,” he says.

Sure, Teslas don’t require as much maintenance and owners save on gas. But for large parts and mechanical problems, a Tesla owner is often looking at paying double the price a standard combustion engine vehicle would. Paying $160 or more for tire repairs compared to $100 for standard vehicles, or $2,000 to $4,000 for brakes compared to around $1,500, can sting. And those higher costs don’t translate to greater earnings for mechanics — just pricier parts and, occasionally, more complex or intensive labour.

And it’s not just Tesla, Chow says. In recent years, some manufacturers have rushed to enter the electric vehicle market, resulting in imperfect manufacturing — he’s seeing more instances of breakdowns that just aren’t worth the labour and time it’d take to fix them, if they can be fixed at all. “When the margin is at zero, there’s really no incentive, right?” he says. 

Others see more sense in the early-market maneuvers dealers and manufacturers are making. “The parts are expensive, and [there’s risk of] damage installing it or programming it incorrectly,” says Mark Sherry, a trainer and curriculum developer for auto repair education, who has worked with Nissan, GM and Centennial College, among others. His argument echoes what auto manufacturers told the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in a May 2021 inquiry into anticompetitive practices in the repair sector: they cited data security, the protection of intellectual property, quality of service and the potential for reputational damage should a third party hinder the operations of a vehicle, as reasons to restrict access to particular diagnostic tools, parts and data.

In response, the trade commission concluded that “although manufacturers have offered numerous explanations for their repair restrictions, the majority are not supported by the record.” But this opinion is not universally held: just two years later, a California judge threw out a class action lawsuit against Tesla that claimed the company was limiting competition by charging higher prices and causing longer wait times for third-party repairs. 

Sherry believes that auto technicians also bear some responsibility for being shut out of electric vehicles. “To be honest, the biggest problem is that most mechanics hate electrical, and they hate hydraulics … So there’s a lot of resistance to that from a technician standpoint,” he says. 

This is hotly debated. Many assume that the skills required to service an electric vehicle would be entirely different than the ones used for decades to service combustion engines — but that’s not the case, says Christopher Syme, a lifelong mechanic who used to run a shop in Toronto’s east end, and now teaches at Centennial College. “Cars have been adopting new technologies and evolving at an increasingly rapid speed since the early ’90s,” he says. “We work with high voltage, with alternating currents, with all of these systems that have gradually culminated in hybrid or electric vehicles … We’ve been forced to adapt and work on it for years and years and years.”

Any competent mechanic could, with the right tools and training, be able to make the switch, Syme says. While political rhetoric paints climate-friendly policies as “some kind of catastrophe for working-class people,” he adds, the much bigger threats are the general affordability issues plaguing independent Toronto businesses. “Even if it didn’t go electric, we would be facing a crisis in terms of justifying the cost of proprietary equipment and tools.”

Professor Michael Lomnicki (middle) teaches a class on how to safely service electric vehicles at Centennial College School of Transportation in Toronto.

The Local and The Narwhal spoke with instructors and leaders at some of Ontario’s biggest automotive technology programs: all of them said the most crucial skill needed for electric vehicle repairs is critical thinking, and fostering that skill early helps ensure no student is kept out of an evolving automotive field. The instructors admit it has become a slightly more complex arena for students to navigate. But they’re being trained accordingly: at Toronto’s Centennial College and Ontario Tech University in Oshawa, education and training on the basics of electric vehicles and hybrid vehicles have become a mandatory part of the curriculum for all incoming students. And students aspiring to build careers working on cars should be introduced to electric vehicles right from high school, argues Kevin Fam, a teacher in the Toronto District School Board’s Experiential Learning program. Fam used to work in management with hybrid manufacturers. Now, he’s pushing to update a 10-year-old auto shop curriculum to reflect the innovation in the sector, and get high school students into early placements with manufacturers. 

But the industry that these students will be entering, and the role independent auto repair shops will be allowed to play in it, is still uncertain. Right now, says Mark Sherry, the dearth of regulation means the electric vehicle sector is “a little bit like the Wild West.” But Canada takes many of its cues on automotive regulation from the U.S., and at the moment, south of the border, the House Energy and Commerce Committee is reviewing a repair bill that would mandate auto manufacturers to provide information relating to diagnostics, repair and services to the vehicle’s owner upon request. In Canada, a broader repair bill C-244, amending the Copyright Act, will allow Canadians to access their own data to diagnose and fix certain products, including vehicles.

This would be the first step towards the auto-specific right-to-repair legislation promised by the Liberals in the 2023 budget — the kind of protections that would stop independent and lifelong auto mechanics like Shahwali Wali and James Chow from being shut out of the industry.

Technician Sean Meek learns how to safely disconnect an electric vehicle battery at Centennial College School of Transportation in Toronto. The transition to electric vehicles means automotive mechanics have to adapt their skillsets, but adaptation has long been a necessity in the industry.

Ultimately, mechanics also need to decide whether it’s worth the personal investment to adapt. In The Junction, Wali is thinking about retirement. Even if right-to-repair is enshrined in law, rising costs and changing clientele could mean he’s better off closing up shop, or leaving it to his brother. “I bought this place for cheap once. Now they want to build a condominium here,” Wali laughs resignedly. 

Meanwhile, in Richmond Hill, Chow is keeping an eye on conversations unfolding in the U.S. and Canada. Progress has been slow and tenuous, with dealers and manufacturers figuring out how they want the new age of electric vehicles to unfold, how they want to wield their power. At Chow’s shop, electric vehicle repairs are becoming more feasible, with more data from Tesla’s repair manual made accessible earlier this year. “We are starting to see options,” he says cautiously. When we spoke again in June, Chow’s shop was getting more referrals from Tesla and Michelin for electric vehicle repairs that don’t need dealer expertise. He’s seen a steady uptick in Teslas coming to the shop, sometimes multiple in a day. It could be just a coincidence, Chow says. Or if manufacturers align their goals with those of independent repair shops and their customers — by choice or through regulation — it could just be a glimpse into the future.

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In recent weeks, news reports have said waste management giant GFL Environmental Inc. is reviewing potential buyout offers. Since its launch in southern Ontario in 2007, the Vaughan-based company now describes itself as the “fourth-largest diversified environmental services company in North America.” GFL does everything from collecting waste and running landfills to operating oil refineries and responding to hazardous spills. It employs more than 20,000 people, operates across Canada and much of the U.S. and has completed more than 260 acquisitions since its inception, according to its 2023 annual report. 

As it’s expanded, however, GFL has also accumulated numerous environmental violation warnings, reports of water contamination, fires at its facilities and complaints about odour pollution from people who live near its landfills. These kinds of issues are not unusual in the sector and GFL’s competitors have also been tied to various environmental problems. Nevertheless, it’s notable that GFL continues to receive government approvals that allow it to operate and grow despite its environmental record.

This waste management company says it’s ‘Green For Life’ — its neighbours disagree

While news of its buyout bids has brought fresh attention to the company’s financials, The Local and The Narwhal dug into instances where GFL was found to be out of compliance with environmental rules and examined the response from officials. GFL did not reply to our repeated requests for an interview or comment. Here’s a sampling of what we found at three of its Canadian locations. 

Dead fish in North Stormont, Ont.

GFL’s facilities in the township of North Stormont, southeast of Ottawa, were highlighted in a 2021 report by the office of the auditor general of Ontario as an example of how the provincial environment ministry allows companies to continue operating and growing despite repeat offences. 

In North Stormont, the auditor general’s report said, the ministry found GFL was contaminating surface water by repeatedly discharging treated leachate (sometimes described as “garbage juice”) “at concentrations resulting in 10 per cent fish mortality.” GFL, meanwhile, was falsely reporting test results to the ministry that showed zero per cent fish mortality, the report added. Despite this, the report said, the ministry granted new approvals to the company, including for the expansion of the landfill where the issue was occurring.

In an email, Craig Calder, chief administrative officer and clerk for the Township of North Stormont, did not directly answer our questions about how the township responded to this issue, nor whether the contamination was still happening.

Instead, Calder suggested we contact the Environment Ministry about any enforcement efforts pertaining to this landfill. 

“The safety and wellbeing of our community, and constituents, is of paramount importance to the Township of North Stormont,” Calder said. “The township has confidence that our provincial regulatory partners investigated, and took steps to remedy, any deficiencies identified.”

In May 2024, GFL made a $260,000 donation to the Township of North Stormont, Ont., for the purchase of fire service vehicles. Photo: Township of North Stormont

GFL has made significant financial contributions to the township over the years. In 2021, when the company announced a new 20-year contract with the township, which covers issues like disposal rates and community fees, GFL agreed to contribute $1.26 million in community benefits. That included a $500,000 donation toward the completion of a new community centre, presented in 2023, and a $260,000 donation to buy new fire service vehicles this May. In a press release, an industry expert hired by North Stormont to review the contract called it “truly a win-win deal,” noting the township would not only receive benefits in terms of infrastructure and the creation of jobs, “but directly to the Townships [sic] coffers in a material way.”

An Environment Ministry spokesperson said by email, “We appreciate the auditor general’s findings” and the ministry was “committed to continuous improvement to ensure that we address spills in a timely, effective, and transparent way.” Regarding the false test results on fish mortality, he said GFL said the error was the result of “clerical oversight,” and had fixed the issue.

This March, the ministry granted GFL approval to expand its North Stormont landfill by adding 15.1 million metres of disposal capacity over 20 years. In an email to The Local and The Narwhal, the spokesperson said an applicant’s past history of non-compliance doesn’t result in an automatic denial of its application for an environmental approval, though it may be considered. An appointed ministry director makes “site-specific decisions” for each application after a detailed review, he said. 

An inspection of GFL’s Abbotsford facility by B.C.’s Environment Ministry in 2022 found that it was discharging waste into the environment without proper authorization. Photo: B.C. Ministry of Environment and Climate Change Strategy

Conflicting stories in Abbotsford, B.C.

GFL operates a hauling site, also known as a waste transfer facility, in Abbotsford, B.C. In March 2022, B.C.’s Environment Ministry issued a warning letter to the company. It stated that during an inspection, its officers found GFL was discharging waste into the environment without proper authorization, an offence that could carry a maximum fine of $1 million, up to six months in prison or both. (Such punishment is unlikely, though; B.C.’s Environment Ministry said it has not issued GFL any administrative penalties. “The ministry’s inspection reports outline the remedial actions needed, and the company has taken those steps to comply with our requirements,” the ministry told The Local and The Narwhal in an email.)

The warning letter explained inspectors found that effluent, or liquid waste, discharged from a stormwater drain into a ditch network that fed into Abbotsford’s Lonzo Creek contained multiple chemicals, including ammonia, arsenic and iron, at levels that were well above water quality guidelines. 

To test for toxicity, scientists take samples of effluent and see how different species react when they’re exposed to it. Effluent samples taken from that same drain within the facility killed 50 per cent of rainbow trout and a type of water flea at varying concentrations and exposure times in lab tests, the letter said. It ordered the company to cease unauthorized discharges into the environment.

A stormwater drain in GFL’s Abbotsford facility. In lab tests, at a certain concentration and exposure time, samples from this drain killed 50 per cent of rainbow trout. Photo: B.C. Ministry of Environment and Climate Change Strategy

When asked about this issue, a B.C. Environment Ministry spokesperson said in an April 9 email that GFL had improved the facility since 2022, including hiring an environmental professional to carry out a site monitoring plan, installing and maintaining storm drain protection measures and reducing the volume of waste it received. 

Exceeding levels set by water quality guidelines “does not imply that unacceptable risks exist,” the ministry spokesperson said, only that “the potential for adverse effects may be increased” and additional investigation may be required. The ministry spokesperson said GFL submitted lab results from stormwater samples in January 2024, which showed no further action was required.

However, the spokesperson’s response to The Local and The Narwhal contradicted information posted to B.C.’s online natural resource compliance and enforcement database just days earlier. There, a second warning letter to GFL dated April 3 showed the Abbotsford facility was still out of compliance. Water quality data from January 2024 reviewed by an Environment Ministry officer showed effluent was being discharged that exceeded the guidelines for multiple chemicals, including some of the same ones previously identified.

Additionally, it said effluent was also discharged directly into the ground through “significant” cracks in the pavement. A supporting photo attached to that letter showed an intricate web of cracks across the facility’s asphalt surface. The letter repeated its warning of the potential for a fine or imprisonment if convicted.

Asked about the April 3 letter, the ministry spokesperson again said that the ministry determined immediate action was not required because the lab results were for samples collected from catch basins, where water is treated before being discharged into the environment. Regarding the concerns detailed in the April letter, he said: “It appears they’ve been addressed.”  

At GFL’s Stoney Creek landfill in Hamilton, Ont., residents have reported an overwhelming stench. Video: Christopher Katsarov Luna / The Local / The Narwhal

An unbearable stench in Hamilton

GFL’s Stoney Creek landfill — a Hamilton, Ont. facility the company acquired in 2022 — is only meant to accept non-hazardous industrial waste, like excavation materials and by-products from steel production. It doesn’t take in garbage, it says on its website, “so there are no garbage-related odours.”

Residents nearby, however, said that while they had detected occasional odours from the landfill in years past, last spring a sudden, overwhelming stench became pervasive and unbearable. It lasted throughout much of the summer, subsided during the winter, then returned intermittently this spring, residents said.

A provincial officer’s order from the Ontario Environment Ministry dated October 2023 said GFL had stated the site was generating elevated levels of leachate (“garbage juice,” remember?), which was pooling in the waste containment areas, known as cells. The officer said leachate issues were identified as the main source of the odours. 

The officer’s report also said air monitoring conducted around the landfill in September 2023 showed levels of total reduced sulphur compounds, a gaseous mix of chemicals, that exceeded the ministry’s standard.

Among other tasks, it ordered GFL to remove leachate from the site, provide weekly progress reports to the provincial officer and hire a qualified person to submit an air monitoring plan.

In April 2024, another provincial officer’s order was issued, this time regarding waste that was piled too high, which the officer believed was contributing to further odour issues. The order called for GFL to gradually lower the height of the waste piles, moving some of the contents into new cells it is constructing.

In an online community meeting this April, company officials told residents they still didn’t have a “cogent explanation” for what happened last spring, but said that the problem was being taken care of and the number of odour complaints had declined. Though they were confident they had taken adequate measures to reduce smells, they said active landfills generate intermittent odours as part of normal operations. 

Earlier this month, members of a community Facebook group called “Shut Down The Stoney Creek Dump” said the stench had returned. “It stinks again this morning. So glad they took care of the odour,” one resident posted.  

Updated on July 9, 2024, at 10:25 a.m. ET: A previous version of this story incorrectly described North Stormont as southwest of Ottawa. It is southeast.

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.

In the hollow of the Don Valley, on the site of a historic brickyard and quarry, stands a nearly 70-year-old, 53,000-square-foot testament to the potential of Toronto’s carbon-neutral future.

The TD Future Cities Centre at Evergreen Brick Works, now used for sustainability conferences, exhibits and community events, is a case study in climate-resilient and sustainable construction. In 2017, the former kiln building underwent a retrofit that targeted not just energy efficiency but also “embodied” carbon — the emissions baked into the building’s lifecycle, including material extraction, manufacturing, transport, construction and demolition.

The renovation struck a careful balance between making do with the old and selectively building anew. The floor was raised to counter flood risk. New low-carbon materials were paired with recovered brick, cement and metal from the existing structure. Geothermal and solar technology, which derive energy from the ground and the sun, were combined to store heat seasonally. By reusing existing material, the potential embodied carbon footprint was halved, the amount saved roughly equivalent to the annual emissions of 47 single-family homes in Toronto. When complete, the heating and cooling system will be 97 per cent emissions neutral. In this way, a building that once fired the bricks that built Toronto has become part of the city’s climate solution.

Illustration: Shawn Parkinson / The Narwhal

Buildings are the largest source of greenhouse gases in Toronto, accounting for 56 per cent of the city’s overall emissions as of 2021, surpassing both waste and transportation sectors, according to an annual report released by the city. As Toronto hurtles towards tandem goals of 65,000 new rent-controlled homes by 2030 and net-zero emissions by 2040, all new and existing buildings will have to be designed and built to operate at near-zero carbon. 

But the pathway to the city’s ambitious net-zero goals is blocked by corporate disinterest and gaps in funding. Most developers fail to see the financial benefits of greening their construction practices, leaving individual homeowners to shoulder the responsibility alongside an overcommitted, under-resourced municipal government. While some small companies and non-profits are trying to carry the torch, the only way to decarbonize Toronto’s buildings is mass commitment — and lots of cash.

The TD Future Cities Centre at Evergreen Brick Works in Toronto is a case study in climate-resilient and sustainable construction, using recycled, low-carbon materials and structural innovation to reduce emissions and be prepared for extreme weather. Photo: Chloë Ellingson / The Local / The Narwhal

Most builders favour low cost over low carbon, but Toronto is getting strict about emissions

“There’s definitely more people thinking about [green construction] than there were five years ago,” says Ryan Zizzo, founder and CEO of Mantle Developments, an engineering-based climate consultancy that worked on the transformation at the Future Cities Centre. 

One of a handful of Canadian firms solely focused on low-carbon materials and construction, Mantle helps policymakers, manufacturers, developers and builders prepare for upcoming climate targets. When the revitalization began in 2017, two years into Mantle’s operations, sustainable development practices weren’t standard in the industry. You couldn’t find many other construction sites in Canada employing new structural innovation to minimize materials, recycling pre-existing elements or using low-carbon concrete.

“It’s still not the default,” adds Zizzo. Big players in sustainability, like Tridel, The Daniels Corporation and Windmill Developments, are a minority in the industry.

Zizzo estimates only five to 10 per cent of the construction market in Toronto is implementing low-carbon practices — the vast majority are still making decisions based on the lowest upfront cost over long-term value and impact. “The country was burning from coast to coast last year,” Zizzo says. Temperatures in Toronto are rising, with heat waves projected to grow in number and intensity with every passing year, alongside other extreme weather. “We’re in a climate emergency.” 

Ryan Zizzo is the founder and CEO of Mantle Developments, one of a handful of Canadian firms solely focused on low-carbon materials and construction. Photo: Chloë Ellingson / The Local / The Narwhal

Three years into an accelerated net-zero strategy, the city has gradually ramped up its goals for low-carbon construction and retrofits. The next target is just over the horizon: a 45 per cent reduction in city-wide emissions from 1990 levels by next year, which would be a four per cent improvement from when the strategy was adopted. 

To make good on their goals, the city’s environment and climate division is developing a bylaw that would set “reasonable and achievable performance standards” for all buildings to reduce their pollution levels, according to a recent municipal accountability report. If successfully instituted, the bylaw could first take effect in July 2026, starting with large, institutional and high-rise buildings and gradually trickling down to low-rise residential buildings by 2030.

New developments in Toronto already follow the Toronto Green Standard, a set of tiered environmental guidelines — the base tier of which is mandatory and higher tiers optional for private developers — designed to incentivize builders to curb emissions by offering rebates when a project achieves specific environmental goals. 

But in the last 14 years, less than 100 private developments have met the higher tiers of the green standard, according to data provided to The Local and The Narwhal by the city. Currently, these buildings make up a meagre portion of Toronto’s ever-booming construction output, which is estimated to include 500 condo towers before 2030.

However, net-zero might soon be the expectation rather than the exception. With every update, the green standard advances requirements to encourage higher environmental performance. If all goes according to plan, and council ratifies the change, the standard of near-zero emissions will move down to a single mandatory tier by 2028, according to Jane Welsh, acting manager for city planning.

Potentially blocking the path to progress, however, are frustrated builders. They argue that more regulations would slow down construction, translating to fewer homes and, ultimately, reduced affordability for homeowners. The Residential Construction Council of Ontario  is considering a legal challenge to green standard requirements for new buildings, according to organization president Richard Lyall. He claims the standard undermines provincial and national building codes and lacks legal authority.

But in the face of an existential climate threat, Zizzo says the time for decisive action is now. “The real vision of what we want to accomplish,” he says of his consultancy, “is to transform [buildings] from being one of the biggest sources of climate pollution to being one of the solutions.” 

He points to the potential of bio-based materials like mass timber, a natural and renewable building material made of wood engineered to be strong enough to replace concrete and steel. “We’re actually taking emissions out of the atmosphere when we build with these types of materials,” Zizzo says. If harvested from sustainably managed forests, widespread use of the material could help to sequester carbon within buildings. 

“We have to radically change our built environment,” he says. “And if we don’t, that’s not compatible with the future.”

Condo towers and new builds as seen from Bloor Street East. In the last 14 years, fewer than 100 private developments have opted into the higher tiers of Toronto’s green building standard. Photo: Chloë Ellingson / The Local / The Narwhal

Upping energy efficiency of Toronto’s existing buildings is a huge challenge

New builds are only one part of the puzzle. By the city’s calculations, an estimated 476,000 existing homes and buildings need to be retrofitted to be more energy efficient by 2040 — that’s 27,000 homes and 400 multi-unit residential buildings each year, in addition to a couple thousand commercial, industrial and institutional buildings. For some buildings, a retrofit means installing new equipment, like switching from natural gas to an electric heat pump. For others, deeper changes to the insulation, heating, ventilation and air conditioning system or building exterior are required. 

“Technically it’s possible,” says Shoshanna Saxe, an engineering professor at the University of Toronto and a Canada Research Chair in sustainable infrastructure, of the ambitious retrofit goals. “But it will require money and effort and investments and gumption. That’s yet to be seen, if we have it.”

Last year, energy company Enbridge Gas supported a total of 13,530 commercial, industrial and residential building retrofits in Toronto — an ostensible success, but just a fraction of what is needed each year to meet the city’s goals. “We’re not anywhere near the trajectory we need to be on,” says Saxe.

“Things are moving very quickly on the technological front of decarbonization,” says How-Sen Chong, lead climate campaigner with the Toronto Environmental Alliance, citing the accelerating adoption of electric heat pumps as an example of a technological change pushing us closer to our climate targets. 

Despite these incremental improvements, however, Canadian households aren’t on track to electrify their heating by 2100, let alone 2040, according to a 2023 report from the Building Decarbonization Alliance. “It’s just very challenging to do,” Chong says of the daunting road ahead. “To a certain extent, we’re building the bridge while we’re walking across it.”  

The city is well aware that this is a problem beyond their capacity to handle alone. Retrofitting existing buildings in Toronto is estimated to require a $145 billion investment over the next 25 years. “We lack the available resources to fully fund the level of activity required to meet our retrofitting goals,” reads a municipal report from September 2023. The price tag would have to be shared among all levels of government, alongside businesses and homeowners. 

This year, the city dedicated a capital investment of $1.5 billion and an operational budget of $63.4 million to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as a whole, far below the $4 billion to $9 billion in annual investments the city estimates are needed until 2040 for retrofits alone. 

“We would like to see more activity and work with the private sector and commercial banks,” James Nowlan, executive director of environment and climate at the City of Toronto, says. He admits that no such programs exist at the moment. “But we continue to engage and look at what might be.” 

When it comes to provincial support, Nowlan says, conversations have been more focused on working toward a low-emissions electricity grid and expanding transit options. The province itself seems most preoccupied with Premier Doug Ford’s promise of 1.5 million new homes by 2031. 

Last year, The Narwhal obtained documents from a 2022 meeting between the province and federal government in which Ontario officials “expressed that their focus remains building homes” and that their preference was to revisit discussions about green building standards “at a later time.” The province initially sought feedback on how it “manages its natural heritage … while supporting growth and development,” but reducing development-related emissions isn’t central to its main housing goals. 

Slow, low uptake of homeowner retrofit loans and grants

While retrofits are essential to slashing emissions, they also come with steep upfront costs for property owners — from $6,000 to $100,000 and above. But homeowners do see returns on their investment, monetary or otherwise. A deep retrofit, including upgrades to the roof, adding windows for increased daylight or replacing a gas-burning heating, ventilation and air conditioning system with a heat pump, can save up to 60 per cent of energy costs. Retrofits that tackle insulation, ventilation, draft-proofing and humidity control can also improve air quality and reduce the risk of mould.  

Grants and low- or no-interest loans are available to interested homeowners through both federal and municipal sources. But compared to the size of the city and the scale of its new developments, the uptake is minimal. In the decade since it was launched, Toronto’s Home Energy Loan Program has received under 3,000 applications from eligible homeowners, with just 155 offers granted in 2023. The High-Rise Retrofit Improvement Support Program, which targets residential apartment buildings built before 1990, has supported only 15 projects since 2013. It received four applications last year. 

Retrofits could make residential highrises more climate resilient and energy efficient. But property owners have shown a reluctance to take advantage of the city’s financing programs. Photo: Chloë Ellingson / The Local / The Narwhal

“Retrofits are difficult — they’re disruptive, expensive, and complicated,” says Marianne Touchie, an engineering professor at the University of Toronto. “There’s really no economic incentive for building owners to do this on their own.” To protect tenants, city-funded financial supports also restrict above-guideline rent increases connected with the retrofits, meaning landlords can’t use the improvements to justify higher rent prices. 

Some building owners might be driven to retrofits because of high utility costs or unsatisfactory building performance, but Touchie says it’s unlikely to be a priority. In 2021, the city reported that retrofit-related costs have risen 37 per cent since before the pandemic. “I don’t know if there’s enough money in those programs to get people from not considering a retrofit to considering one.”

But in the corner of the housing market that eschews any profit motives, climate and affordability goals work together, rather than against each other. “Some of the greenest housing that is built in Canada is built by non-market housing providers,” Cherise Burda, executive director of City Building TMU at Toronto Metropolitan University, says. The reduction in energy bills works in favour of both residents and housing providers, and climate resiliency is often already built into non-profit mandates. Non-profit housing built on city land is also beholden to the city’s green standard; working with a municipality further eliminates costs, and revenue from such projects could be reinvested into more green housing. 

“There’s a whole list of stacked savings that can come together to make non-market housing viable and sustainable,” Burda says. 

East-end Toronto neighbours help each other cut housing emissions

In The Pocket — a Riverdale neighbourhood with tree-lined, dead-end streets, shielded from traffic on one end by a transit rail yard — you might notice cheerful green lawn signs proudly proclaiming, “We have reduced our home’s carbon footprint,” followed by a QR code.

Since 2017, Pocket residents have been bringing their houses down to near-zero emissions. Paul Dowsett, a resident of the neighbourhood for 27 years, is one of the founding members of the Pocket Change Project, which acts as a resource hub for homeowners looking to retrofit their properties, complete with volunteer coordinators, an outreach team and a technical advisory committee. Some members, like Dowsett, were youngsters in the 1970s during the first-ever Earth Day. “There was a promise of peace, love and grooviness, and living in harmony with the planet,” he says. “It didn’t quite work out that way … but I think the yearning for that promise stayed with us all along.” 

Others found their way in through curiosity — an eco-fun fair at the park, a mention at the community association’s annual general meeting, a heat pump party — “It’s trusted neighbours talking to trusted neighbours,” Dowsett says. As of this June, the initiative is working with around 40 neighbourhood participants looking to switch from natural gas to heat pumps, swap gas ranges for induction stoves, upgrade leaky insulation and more. 

The changes aren’t always simple or quick to implement. “It’s still a bit of a disjointed industry,” Dowsett says, explaining that participating homeowners must make it through a maze of contractors and municipal approvals before reaching the elusive net-zero. “One thing depends on another,” he says. “But I think people generally understand they’re dealing with something that’s complex, with a lot of moving parts.”

Paul Dowsett is a founding member of the Pocket Change Project, a resource hub for homeowners looking to retrofit their properties to make them more energy efficient. Photo: Chloë Ellingson / The Local / The Narwhal

As an architect, Dowsett has been folding his retrofit into ongoing home renovations ever since he moved in. It wasn’t until December 2022 that his transformation was complete, after electrifying his household appliances. That process alone cost him $15,000, though Dowsett says he would’ve had to replace the appliances regardless. Annually, he’s saving $400 on bills.

It’s not a process accessible to everyone — the first barrier is simply being a homeowner, let alone one who can afford the tens of thousands of dollars involved in a serious retrofit. Pocket Change helps facilitate some savings, with vendors offering discounts to members, particularly in the area of air-sealing and insulation work. Over time, the program has expanded and taken on a life of its own. “That’s what we wanted it to be.” 

As interest spread to other parts of the city, with Dowsett and his team fielding more questions from outside their neighbourhood, Toronto Home Retrofits was born, a new non-profit focused on expanding the Pocket Change model. With support from Toronto Hydro and The Atmospheric Fund, the organization just hired a full-time executive director. Dowcett says there’s been widespread interest in the program from neighbourhoods, faith-based associations, climate activist groups and companies alike. 

Mantle Developments continues to expand its own clientele and impact as well. “Low-carbon materials used to just be something people talked about at conferences,” Zizzo says. Now, Mantle has helped update the Toronto Green Standard, and has helped clients like the YMCA of Greater Toronto transform their climate and decarbonization strategy, reducing emissions by over 52 per cent since 2008, with more to come. Zizzo says the next generation of YMCAs are looking into more advanced climate strategies, like deconstruction over demolition, mass timber construction and harnessing geothermal energy. 

Despite financial hurdles and slow progress, there’s still hope that the value of emission reductions can be recognized independent of their economic potential. The federal government’s annual inventory report, tracking emissions from all economic sectors, found greenhouse gas emissions from the building sector have increased since 2005, only offset by decreases in other categories, like electricity. 

“We’re seeing evidence of stronger economic growth linked to less carbon-intensive activity,” says Zizzo. “[But] the building industry is very conservative.” Like most sustainability-related action, there is an urgency that’s not being met. But Zizzo is seeing firsthand that the industry is starting to take climate change seriously.

“Seeing the huge change that’s happened in the past 10 years as it relates to green buildings and low-carbon materials — it shows we can move quickly,” he says. “We need to move a lot quicker.”

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.

This spring, Jocey Alec, a Wet’suwet’en land defender and daughter of Dinï ze’ (Hereditary Chief) Woos, travelled to Toronto to voice concerns to leaders of Canada’s largest bank, which financed a pipeline running directly through her territory.

She was allowed to speak for 11 seconds.

It was three years after armed police raided Wet’suwet’en territory, enforcing a court-ordered civil injunction against anyone impeding construction of the pipeline, called Coastal GasLink, which will carry fossil fuels from northeast British Columbia across Indigenous territories to the coast.

The pipeline was made possible with the help of Royal Bank of Canada (RBC), which acted as the “exclusive financial advisor” to TC Energy, the company behind the pipeline’s construction. As “global lead coordinating arranger,” the bank also helped arrange loans for project construction financing.

Wet’suwet’en Hereditary Chiefs fiercely opposed Coastal GasLink running through their unceded territory without their consent, while at the same time, five of six elected Wet’suwet’en band councils supported the project and signed agreements with the pipeline company and the B.C. government. The pipeline’s construction was finished last winter. 

In 2019, police raided Wet’suwet’en territory to enforce a court-ordered civil injunction against anyone impeding construction of the Coastal GasLink pipeline. Wet’suwet’en land defender Jocey Alec travelled to Toronto this spring to voice concerns about Royal Bank’s financing of the pipeline. Photo: Amber Bracken / The Narwhal

TC Energy says the project created more than 25,700 full-time equivalent jobs in B.C. and contributed $3.2 billion to the province’s gross domestic product, among other benefits. But the company has also faced multiple fines for breaking environmental rules, and a report by Amnesty International condemned the “years-long campaign of violence, harassment, discrimination and dispossession” against Wet’suwet’en land defenders at the hands of law enforcement and the fossil fuel industry.

Alec had already tried talking to the bank’s executives about the mistreatment of her community; she travelled to Saskatoon in 2023 to speak at another Royal Bank shareholder meeting. There, she was stopped by security, threatened with arrest and separated from the main group of demonstrators, she said. 

This year, on a dreary, rainy April day, she was determined to get her message across to Royal Bank leadership gathered at the Toronto Congress Centre, a sprawling set of low-slung convention halls in the suburbs near Pearson airport. 

“My name is Jocey, I am a Wet’suwet’en land defender,” Alec began when it was her turn to speak. “Proposal number 7 speaks to holding an annual vote on RBC’s climate plans,” she continued, referring to one of the shareholder proposals up for debate. 

“Meanwhile, RBC continues to ignore and violate the voices of those —” 

Suddenly, 11 seconds in, she was cut off by the chair of the bank’s board, Jacynthe Côté, who told Alec her questions needed to focus on the agenda item at hand — in that moment, nominees for the bank’s board of directors. 

“I’m sorry, is your question around the election of directors?” Côté interjected.

Alec pressed on. “I’m here to share my experience directly from the RBC-funded Coastal GasLink pipeline,” she said. “I’ve been ripped off my territory —”

Côté interrupted again. “As your question is not about the election of directors, I will need to move to the next question. Thank you for joining us.” 

Speaking to The Narwhal and The Local over the phone after the event, Alec said the moment had revealed how the leadership of Royal Bank was in denial.

“I was describing my experience once again, but then they just ended up shutting me down,” she said. 

“I feel like they do get the message, but they just don’t want to acknowledge their complicity on what they’re funding.” 

Illustration: Shawn Parkinson / The Narwhal

This year, Royal Bank was declared the top financier of fossil fuels among Canada’s big five banks by the 2024 Banking on Climate Chaos report, a joint effort by organizations including the Rainforest Action Network, BankTrack, Oil Change International and the Sierra Club. The report said it had provided fossil projects in Canada and beyond with US$256 billion since 2016, US$28 billion of that in 2023.

And according to Bloomberg Terminal data compiled by environmental nonprofit Stand.earth, as of March 2022 Royal Bank had helped co-finance a loan for Coastal GasLink worth $6.5 billion. Stand.earth said the bank had additionally provided a $40 million corporate loan, $275 million in other types of financing and $200 million in co-financed working capital for the project.

The Narwhal and The Local asked Royal Bank and TC Energy if they disputed the financial figures compiled by Stand.earth. Neither addressed the dollar amount, and both said the project had, in TC Energy’s words, “the support of all 20 out of 20 elected Indigenous groups.” 

“RBC is one of 26 lenders to the project,” bank spokesperson Andrew Block said in an emailed response to questions from The Narwhal and The Local. “We have made a commitment to it as a financer and we have an obligation to honour that commitment. There are many individuals and organizations, including Indigenous ones, involved in this project and relying on its completion.”

Block also wrote that Royal Bank respects “there are differing opinions within Indigenous communities and as we’ve sought input from many members, they’ve told us that these differences are best resolved within their own communities.”

“We fully understand the imperative for climate action and are supporting our clients in accelerating their efforts in the transition to a greener economy, including exploring growth opportunities in low-carbon energy,” he wrote.

There are faint signs, however, that Royal Bank may be finally starting to feel the heat on climate.

Demonstrators gathered outside the Toronto Congress Centre in April, during Royal Bank’s annual meeting. Speakers inside said they weren’t given enough time to express their concerns. Photo: Carrie Davis / The Narwhal / The Local

After pressure from New York City, RBC agrees to fuller disclosure

Regardless of the specific financial relationships it enters into, it is Royal Bank’s steady focus on fossil fuels that continues to bring criticism upon Canada’s largest bank.

The bank’s capital markets arm published a research note this month titled Quality on Sale, Act Now. A version of the note that appeared in The Globe and Mail describes the oilsands industry as “the most attractive we have seen in over a decade” in terms of investment. It also suggests some oil and gas stocks are undervalued, and makes no mention of the risk of stranded assets in a low-carbon economy.

Royal Bank said a longer version of the note includes a reference to climate and emissions, but that version is behind a registration wall on its website and not easily accessible to the general public.

The bank, which has nearly 100,000 employees and operates in 29 countries, is now worth approximately $193 billion, fresh off a $13 billion takeover of HSBC Canada. And it’s pulling in gobs of money, including the $15 billion in profits it earned over the year ending October 2023.

But in the run-up to the annual meeting, the bank made some moves that surprised analysts. 

One involved an 11th-hour reversal on disclosure. In a document circulated to shareholders before its meeting, the bank recommended they vote against a resolution proposed by New York City comptroller Brad Lander, whose job requires ensuring investments made by the city’s public pension funds are secure.

Lander wanted the bank to show, in the form of a ratio, its financial ties with fossil fuel projects compared to clean energy sources. The comptroller, acting on behalf of multiple New York City retirement systems, was worried pensioners’ investment portfolios were “at risk” from over US$1 trillion in fossil fuel financing provided by U.S. and Canadian banks since the Paris Agreement on climate change. The fear was these investments could become seriously devalued stranded assets as demand for and production of fossil-free energy grows. 

Royal Bank has nearly 100,000 employees and operates in 29 countries. It is worth approximately $193 billion and made $15 billion in profits in the year ending October 2023. Photo: Carrie Davis / The Narwhal / The Local

When Lander first asked for the ratio, Royal Bank said it would be “premature” to publicly reveal this information, which would not provide any “meaningful additional insights” anyway. But about a week before the April meeting, the bank agreed to disclose this ratio, which it told The Narwhal and The Local it will publish in its next climate report. 

Matt Price, executive director at Investors for Paris Compliance, a Canadian shareholder advocacy group, called that reversal a significant moment.

“Shareholder campaigns — particularly when New York City got involved — added to the pressure on RBC to take some initial steps on climate,” Price, whose group also studies corporations’ net-zero promises, told The Narwhal and The Local. 

“But we wouldn’t be seeing that without the focus on the bank from Indigenous groups, due to its financing of fossil fuel expansion projects in their territories.”

In March, Royal Bank added questions about impacts to Indigenous lands and communities to its risk-assessment process. Last year, it updated its human rights statement, which says it respects “the inherent right of Indigenous Peoples to self-determination in accordance with international and domestic law,” and says the bank is working with Indigenous Peoples “to better understand approaches to operationalizing the principle of free, prior and informed consent.”

Maya Menezes, senior climate finance organizer with Stand.earth, said both the ratio disclosure and the decision to acknowledge Indigenous Rights in its policies are significant shifts for Royal Bank. 

“So there is movement, and that’s important. And it’s only because of the herculean organizing efforts led by Indigenous peoples and allies across the country — mostly young people,” she said.

There have been other signs Royal Bank is on the defensive. 

Last summer, the bank posted a job for a “head of climate transition,” where the position would in part “anticipate and manage RBC’s reputation related to climate transition activities and proactively mitigate any risk in this area,” and “develop and implement effective and lasting responses to climate activism.”

In November, Royal Bank made its first public commitment to “being prepared to step away” if one of its clients repeatedly “does not demonstrate sufficient planning for the energy transition.” It’s part of a new formal approach to assessing the transition plans of its oil and gas clients as well as those in the power generation business.

Royal Bank says it is the first major Canadian bank to commit to this type of formal approach, which has been key to singling out “opportunities and areas of focus” to help its clients slash greenhouse gas emissions. 

Mark Kalegha, who studies the oil and gas industry in Canada as an energy finance analyst at the U.S.-based Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, told The Narwhal and The Local the bank hasn’t given enough information about how this policy would work in practice. 

Financial institutions should be using “consistent and transparent criteria” to communicate net-zero transition plans and policies to clients, according to a report from the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero, which includes Royal Bank through its membership in the Net Zero Banking Alliance.

“Sometimes you have to wield the big stick, so to speak, saying, ‘You don’t comply, and we have targets that we have to meet, so if you’re not aligned with us, we can’t continue to do business with you,’ ” said Kalegha.

That’s not the bank’s only climate commitment that could use a little backbone. On carbon pollution, Royal Bank has pledged to “achieve net-zero in our lending by 2050” — eliminating or offsetting emissions it finances through investments and loans — but this target does not include emissions from other activities, like underwriting, where the bank takes on financial risk for a fee. The bank says it is considering standards for those kinds of emissions.

It has also set interim targets for 2030, such as a 35 per cent reduction of oil and gas emissions from 2019 levels. But that covers so-called emissions intensity, or how much pollution is generated per unit of energy, which can allow for increased overall emissions if more energy is produced. Royal Bank has defended its choice of an emissions intensity goal in its Net-Zero Report, saying that metric has better “stability” and “comparability” between clients. 

Royal Bank acted as the “exclusive financial advisor” to TC Energy, the company behind the Coastal GasLink pipeline. Wet’suwet’en Hereditary Chiefs fiercely opposed the project, while 17 First Nations in the region signed equity agreements with TC Energy. Photo: Matt Simmons / The Narwhal 

Discontent with Royal Bank’s fossil fuel ties goes beyond Coastal GasLink pipeline

At the bank’s annual meeting, Royal Bank’s president and CEO, Dave McKay, told the crowd the bank decides which projects to support by conducting “a very detailed risk assessment” that includes ensuring regulatory compliance and evaluating each project “on its own merits, its own independence.” 

“We feel confident that this framework allows us to decide which projects deserve our support and which don’t,” he said. In an email this month, the bank added it “considers climate impacts and human rights impacts, including on the rights of Indigenous peoples. Before financing a project, RBC conducts due diligence to assess whether environmental and social issues associated with the project have been adequately considered and minimized, mitigated or offset.”

When it came to Coastal GasLink, McKay signaled he had balanced opposition from Wet’suwet’en Hereditary Chiefs against what he saw as support for the pipeline, in the form of equity agreements that TC Energy signed with two coalitions representing elected First Nations governments.

A spokesperson for TC Energy told The Narwhal and The Local that 17 First Nations in the region were now represented in the equity agreements, which have provided a shared 10 per cent ownership stake. That’s compared with 20 Indigenous groups that the company claims broad support from.

McKay raised the statistic in his remarks during the meeting.

“Those are signals that we look for — who’s participating, who is supporting,” he said. “You see very strong economic participation from the vast majority of those First Nations.”

Block, spokesperson for Royal Bank, told The Narwhal and The Local Coastal GasLink was “extensively reviewed and approved by the appropriate regulatory and government bodies and the subject of court rulings.” While the 2019 B.C. Supreme Court injunction forbade interference with pipeline construction, it did not fully resolve the deeper conflicts between Indigenous and Canadian legal systems. Block did not clarify what he meant by court rulings.

While the level of Indigenous criticism at the April meeting was notable, it wasn’t unanimous. Chief Councillor Sharleen Gale, of Fort Nelson First Nation in B.C., said financial support for resource extraction and energy projects in which First Nations have equity stakes is essential to Indigenous economic stability. 

Gale is chair of the First Nations Major Projects Coalition, which says it represents over 160 First Nations across Canada.

“We need our financial backers like RBC to support our nations in taking equity positions in these projects,” Gale said at the meeting. She said she was “grateful” to Royal Bank for being the title sponsor of the coalition’s April conference.

The conference website also listed TC Energy as a sponsor, as well as Enbridge, Cenovus, Chevron, Petronas, Suncor and two influential oil and gas lobby groups, the Pathways Alliance and the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers. 

McKay commended Gale for her “incredible work” on behalf of communities and said the coalition was “instrumental” in bringing together investment capital. “True reconciliation has to be found by economic inclusiveness,” he said. “I think a big part of achieving free, prior and informed consent is allowing economic participation in those journeys.” 

The police presence was noticeable at Royal Bank’s annual meeting in Toronto in April. There were several layers of security for attendees to pass through and no photographs were permitted inside.Photos: Carrie Davis / The Narwhal / The Local

‘I don’t feel, as an Indigenous person, I was respected when I came here to RBC’

Royal Bank’s fossil fuel financing has become international news, covered by Bloomberg, the Financial Times and Al Jazeera. Last year, Hollywood celebrities including Mark Ruffalo, who had already accused the bank of “fueling the climate crisis and violating Indigenous rights” on his Instagram account, joined with Canadian filmmakers to ask the Toronto International Film Festival to end a sponsorship deal with Royal Bank due to its financial ties to the oil and gas industry. 

Canada’s federal Competition Bureau is also probing the bank’s marketing of its Climate Blueprint for evidence that the bank made “false or misleading environmental representations.” (The bank has said it strongly disagrees with the allegations and believes them to be unfounded.)

Speakers that showed up to the April annual meeting in Toronto shared complaints about a variety of oil and gas industry projects to which the bank is allegedly financially linked.

The bank said this meeting was designed in response to complaints about previous gatherings. Côté explained the suburban conference centre was chosen because last year’s space wasn’t big enough. She said a short speaking time was meant to “give more chances to a broader group to be able to ask questions.” 

But several speakers weren’t given the time to get everything they wanted to say off their chests, including some who had travelled from the U.S. 

Crystal Cavalier-Keck, from the Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation, travelled from North Carolina to raise awareness of Royal Bank’s financial ties to an investor in the Mountain Valley Pipeline, which would carry methane-heavy natural gas through the Appalachian Mountains. Photo: Carrie Davis / The Narwhal / The Local

Crystal Cavalier-Keck, from the Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation, travelled from North Carolina as part of a 10-year fight against the the Mountain Valley Pipeline, which would carry methane-heavy natural gas through the Appalachian Mountains. 

Royal Bank has been an underwriter for a US$27 million bond issuance to one of Mountain Valley’s investors, according to BankTrack, which scrutinizes projects supported by private sector commercial banks.

Cavalier-Keck argued a proposed pipeline extension would violate Indigenous Rights, destroy sacred lands and burial grounds and harm endangered species. Requests for comment sent to Mountain Valley Pipeline were not returned before publication.

“Your auditors look at risk. Do you understand the very serious reputational and financial risks RBC faces in helping finance the Mountain Valley Pipeline?” Cavalier-Keck asked.

Côté interrupted Cavalier-Keck to ask, “Do you have a question regarding the election of the auditor?” 

“Will you truly respect Indigenous Rights —” Cavalier-Keck started, before Côté thanked her for her question and got back to the agenda.  

At the post-meeting press conference, Cavalier-Keck said she didn’t know “whether to be sad, mad, angry.” 

“I don’t feel, as an Indigenous person, I was respected when I came here to RBC,” she said.

Asked for comment, Block, the bank spokesperson, wrote RBC “follows a financial industry benchmark for identifying, assessing, managing and mitigating environmental and social risks in project finance-related projects, which considers climate impacts and human rights impacts, including on the rights of Indigenous Peoples.” 

“Before financing a project, RBC conducts due diligence to assess whether environmental and social issues associated with the project have been adequately considered and minimized, mitigated or offset,” he wrote.

Celine Isimbi, a University of Waterloo student and organizer at the youth-led nonprofit Change Course, called Royal Bank’s donation to the university “greenwashing.” The bank says it supports “climate education in Canada.” Photo: Carrie Davis / The Narwhal / The Local

Another speaker, Celine Isimbi, also warned the bank about its reputation. The University of Waterloo student is an organizer at the youth-led nonprofit Change Course, which leads a campaign to kick Royal Bank off Canada’s university campuses. 

Isimbi brushed off the bank’s $2 million donation to the University of Waterloo’s sustainable financial management program, saying “students at all campuses are noticing this greenwashing.”

“You will not be surprised to know that we have a very different perspective and believe supporting climate education in Canada is a positive thing to do,” Block responded, when asked about Isimbi’s comments.

“We believe as a large corporate citizen in Canada and globally, that we have a responsibility to support the communities in which we operate. Supporting the transition to a greener economy and skills development are two areas where RBC is directing its efforts.”

As for the welcome given to critics, Indigenous and otherwise, the bank said all attendees were given the same time allotment. 

“RBC’s board chair and CEO responded respectfully and thoughtfully to multiple questions about climate and Indigenous Rights including from a number of Indigenous participants,” Block wrote.

“Further, the bank had multiple executives and subject matter experts available before, during and after the [meeting] who connected directly with those in attendance onsite.”

‘We don’t have all the ideas,’ Royal Bank CEO says

At the annual meeting, CEO McKay argued the bank is not dragging its feet on tackling climate change — in fact, he felt it is taking “a leadership role.”

In March, the bank announced three new commitments it argued would “help accelerate the transition to a greener economy.” They were included as part of the release of the bank’s 2023 Climate Report. 

The first is a goal of tripling Royal Bank’s lending to renewable energy projects to $15 billion and growing its “low-carbon energy lending” to $35 billion by 2030. The bank also committed to allocating $1 billion for supporting “the development and scaling of innovative climate solutions” by 2030. 

And it committed to getting more money out the door to emissions reduction efforts by creating a new “decarbonization finance” category as part of its 2024 Sustainable Finance Framework.

At the same time, Royal Bank is not rushing to abandon fossil fuel clients anytime soon. 

After pressure from New York City, Royal Bank agreed to disclose the ratio of its financial ties with fossil fuel projects compared to clean energy sources. The decision was hailed as a significant moment by a Canadian shareholder advocacy group. Photo: Carrie Davis / The Narwhal / The Local

In its Client Engagement Approach on Climate, the document where it pledged to walk away from clients that refuse to plan for a low-carbon future, the bank said it still believed “energy companies can help build the low-carbon energy system of the future while being at the heart of efforts to reduce emissions from conventional sources of energy today.” 

When asked by The Narwhal and The Local about criticism that this approach isn’t clear or urgent enough, Block said Royal Bank is “still in the early phases of the implementation of the client engagement approach” and, at this time, the bank is “focused on working with our capital markets energy clients to help advance their transition plans” over the long term.

“We don’t have all the ideas,” and some of Royal Bank’s ideas “may or may not work,” McKay said at the meeting.

He said he agreed the bank needed to continue to “evolve” its strategy for the energy sector. But he said he thought society was still debating “how we do that, and at what pace.” 

Science suggests the pace should be quick. This year, for the first time in recorded history, the planet crossed the critical threshold of 1.5 degrees Celsius over pre-industrial levels for a full 12-month period, according to the European Union. 

The United Nations has warned that, because of the continued burning of fossil fuels, the world will miss its goal of halting global warming at that key level. Without accelerated change, widespread death and suffering is in store for people and wildlife as a result of the heatwaves, droughts, flooding and sea level rise that will be unleashed by unchecked climate change.

For life on Earth, the pace of decarbonization could go a little bit faster.

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.

Back in the 1950s and ’60s, when Paul Fisher was growing up, the rural community of Snow Hill in Sampson County, North Carolina, was a welcoming, predominantly Black, working-class area. Fisher played baseball and joined a Boy Scouts troop, fished in local streams and hunted for rabbits and squirrels in the woods.

“Everybody knew everybody, and it was nice,” says Fisher, now 75. 

Most of his neighbours owned modest plots of farmland. His family, too, had a farm, where they grew cotton, tobacco, peanuts, wheat and oats, and kept a garden. 

After high school, like many of his peers, Fisher left Snow Hill in search of work. By 1975, when he came back home to settle with a young family in tow, a landfill had opened up in the community. Residents put up with it at first, since no one really knew what its impact might be, Fisher says. 

But when it expanded into a regional landfill in the early 1990s, he and other community members became concerned. 

Over the next decades, the landfill grew, undergoing ownership changes. Then, in 2018, a merger brought the landfill under the ownership of Canadian waste management giant GFL Environmental Inc. 

The Sampson County landfill looms behind Paul Fisher, who has been speaking out against it for years. Photo: Andrew Craft / The Local / The Narwhal

Headquartered in Vaughan, Ont., GFL is a major player in the North American waste management sector, offering services from collecting waste and running landfills to operating oil refineries and responding to hazardous spills. Starting in southern Ontario in 2007, it has aggressively expanded since. It now employs more than 20,000 people and operates in much of the U.S. and across Canada, including in about 40 cities and communities in Ontario.

A February notice of intent to sue the company from the non-profit Southern Environmental Law Center alleges that since GFL acquired the Sampson County landfill, the volume of waste that the landfill accepts has surged. A lawyer representing GFL did not reply to The Local and The Narwhal’s requests for a response to the notice of intent to sue. None of the Southern Environmental Law Center’s allegations have been proven in court.

What was once a 15-acre operation is now one of the largest landfills in the state, covering roughly 1,000 acres (about 400 hectares), and it is expected to swell to 41.6 million tons (37.7 million tonnes) of trash by 2043, the letter alleges. And those living in its vicinity are paying the price. Snow Hill is no longer the idyllic rural community of Fisher’s memories. 

The stench, he says, is “outrageous.” Turkey vultures, or buzzards, hover around the neighbourhood, leaving their feathers and droppings wherever they roost. On occasion, Fisher says he’s had to shoot his gun in the air to deter them from landing on his neighbour’s roof, where they tear off the shingles. And Snow Hill is no longer the close-knit community it once was. 

Illustration: Shawn Parkinson / The Narwhal / The Local

The Southern Environmental Law Center’s letter depicts a once-vibrant community that has now become spiritless and polluted. Residents deal with contaminated well water, truck traffic, trash blowing onto their property and pervading odours, the letter says. “Described as a ‘clammy miasma,’ and a ‘greasy, oily’ smell ‘like decaying flesh,’ the odour from the landfill wakes people up at night, stops adults from gardening and children from playing outside and ruins social events like cookouts and church gatherings,” it alleges.  

Roughly 1,100 kilometres away, in Northville Township, Michigan, David Drinan and Leslie Evans are dealing with similar issues, living downwind of the Arbor Hills landfill, a site acquired by GFL in 2020. They, too, describe being beset by constant odours, noise and traffic congestion from trucks hauling waste, as well as contamination of the area’s only cold-water trout stream. Their citizens’ group, The Conservancy Initiative, is fighting GFL’s plans to open a new landfill adjacent to its existing one. 

Meanwhile, across the Canada-U.S. border to the east, residents near GFL’s Stoney Creek landfill in Hamilton, Ont., say they’re fed up with the fetor that suddenly became so pervasive and vile last year they couldn’t open their windows or spend time outdoors for most of the summer. 

Even though the smell died down over the cold winter months, it had returned intermittently early this spring. 

“Still, you can feel it,” says homeowner Nelson Faria — a sickening pong that lingers in the back of your throat. 

Local residents say the odour coming from GFL’s Stoney Creek landfill in Hamilton became unbearable last spring. Photo: Christopher Katsarov Luna / The Local / The Narwhal

The firsthand experiences of the people who live near waste operations owned by GFL and its subsidiaries stand in stark contrast to the company’s eco-friendly image. Green, specifically the vivid shade associated with freshly sprouting leaves and used in the company’s logo, is the colour that makes GFL’s garbage trucks instantly recognizable. It’s also literally in the name, Green For Life. 

“GFL’s vision is to be green for life. It’s as simple as that,” Patrick Dovigi, the company’s smiling chief executive said in a 2022 video, produced for a business campaign on sustainability called Vision 2045.

GFL refers to its employees as “Team Green.” It boasts of various environmental awards from industry groups like the National Waste and Recycling Association. The company publishes sustainability reports that document its efforts to capture landfill gas to produce renewable natural gas, its use of alternative fuel vehicles in its fleet and the expansion of its recycling and material recovery operations. It also donates close to $1.5 million annually to local charities. “GFL is committed to supporting and giving back to the communities we work in and serve,” it said in its 2022 sustainability report. With that environmentally conscious brand image, the GTA company has become a heavyweight in the industry. It reported revenues of more than $7.5 billion in 2023. (To put it in perspective, that’s roughly the annual gross domestic product of Barbados.) And the company was among a group of waste haulers dubbed “market darlings” in a Globe and Mail headline this February, after GFL stock climbed more than 30 per cent within three months. 

Recent news that GFL is now eyeing buyout offers has brought fresh scrutiny to the company’s financials. Arguably less attention has been paid to its environmental track record. As GFL has grown over the years, so too has its list of environmental violations, out of compliance warnings and complaints from the public and citizens’ groups. A 2021 Ontario auditor general’s report said the provincial Environment Ministry had identified GFL as a “repeat offender” that “regularly contravenes the acts, regulations and legal documents overseen by the ministry.” It was the only waste management firm on the report’s list of most frequently reported spillers of hazardous substances in the province. To get the full scope of GFL’s environmental infractions in Ontario, I requested documents on all incidents of its non-compliance recorded by the province’s Environment Ministry, through freedom of information legislation. The ministry’s access and privacy office informed me this was too big of a request — one that could take years to complete. Over and over, residents living near GFL’s facilities who spoke with me characterized the company as a bad neighbour that seems to have little regard for their community’s air, water and land. The risk of fires, the potential release of toxic chemicals into the environment, methane emissions — all are common concerns when living next to a landfill.

While reporting on this story, I sent multiple emails to the company, delivered a list of questions to GFL’s office in Toronto and left phone messages seeking an interview with its chief executive — or anyone, for that matter — who could speak on GFL’s behalf about its environmental track record. The only response I received was from a GFL manager in Alberta, who said if I had reached out to the company’s CEO then he would be in touch if he was interested in providing commentary.

The fact that GFL’s impact on the environment hasn’t hampered its growth reveals a lack of regulatory oversight and enforcement over the industry in which the company has flourished — an industry that, by its very nature, is anything but green. Waste management companies can only thrive when there’s plenty of filth, rubbish and sludge to manage. The more of it people generate — to be picked up, transported, sorted, buried, burned, composted and, to some extent, recycled — the more money there is to be made.

GFL founder Patrick Dovigi: a former hockey player who realized there was money to be made in garbage

GFL’s history is inseparable from that of its founder and chief executive, Patrick Dovigi. (Dovigi did not respond to multiple interview requests.) In photos, he appears dark-haired, clean-cut, with a former athlete’s build that has softened with time. His path to becoming a garbage magnate is the kind of story that newspapers and magazines find irresistible, and has been retold by multiple media outlets over the years.

A relative of NHL stars Phil and Tony Esposito, Dovigi grew up playing hockey in Sault Ste. Marie, Ont. In his teens he played in the Ontario Hockey League and was drafted by the Edmonton Oilers. After leaving professional hockey, he studied business at what’s now Toronto Metropolitan University. There are conflicting reports about the specifics of what happened next. According to a story in Canadian Business, Dovigi got a job at a small investment bank called Standard Mercantile. But in most accounts, including in stories in The Globe and Mail and the Toronto Star, Dovigi went to work for Brovi Investments, a company owned by businessman Romeo DiBattista. It was a job that involved, among other things, serving on the board of a broadcast venture led by KISS star Gene Simmons before it went bankrupt.

A 2015 report in The Globe’s Report on Business magazine said Dovigi was eventually ousted after a rift with the DiBattista family. Before his stint ended, however, Dovigi was assigned to clean up a troubled trash operation in which his employer had invested. That early foray into the waste management industry apparently sparked a realization in the young man that there was money — and lots of it — to be made in garbage.    

In 2007, Dovigi created Green For Life, using seed money from investors to buy up smaller waste operations. 

What we found at three Canadian GFL locations

GFL emerged from relative obscurity in 2011 when it won a contract with the City of Toronto to collect residential garbage on the west side of the city. Its bid for the seven-year agreement was $17.5 million per year, around $2.5 million less than the next lowest-bidding competitor, according to the Toronto Star. The contract got off to a rough start, amid criticism over the city’s decision to privatize trash collection under the late Mayor Rob Ford, early complaints of spotty service and a temporary downgrade by the province of GFL’s safety rating. While privatization reportedly saved the city more than $11 million in the first year, the savings were less apparent in the long term. A report from the city in 2021 found waste collection on the east side of Toronto, which is done in-house by municipal workers, cost roughly the same as contracted collection on the west.

Winning that 2011 contract was “a TSN Turning Point for GFL,” Dovigi told Report on Business — in other words, it was a game-changing moment for the company. 

Since then, GFL’s growth has been meteoric. According to its most recent annual report, the company has completed more than 260 acquisitions since 2007. 

GFL founder and CEO Patrick Dovigi (second from left) rings a ceremonial bell  celebrating the company’s public listing on the New York Stock Exchange on March 4, 2020. It debuted on the stock exchange with a market valuation of US$6.1 billion. Today, it is valued at US$13.9 billion. Photo: Richard Drew / Associated Press

This June, The Globe and Mail reported GFL had hired a financial adviser to examine two buyout offers. One offer is for its full business and a second is for its environmental services division, which includes managing industrial liquid waste. A source told the newspaper that discussions were in the preliminary stages and may not lead to a transaction. Michael Hoffman, a managing director at the wealth management and investment banking firm Stifel, told BNN Bloomberg that there are “a lot of interested parties” looking to purchase GFL, and that at a recent conference, Dovigi had acknowledged a buyout is something he would contemplate. Nevertheless, Hoffman expressed he was skeptical the company, which is currently listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange and New York Stock Exchange, would accept a deal to take it completely private.   

Dealing in waste has made Dovigi a very wealthy man. This May, The Globe reported GFL paid him more than $68 million in 2023, prompting two proxy adviser firms to recommend that shareholders oppose the company’s executive compensation. That pay package included a $2.1 million salary, a $7.8 million bonus, and $36.4 million in “share-based awards,” according to a management information circular from the company. In its 2022 article, Canadian Business put his estimated net worth at $1 billion. That kind of wealth has afforded him an elite lifestyle — with the ability to own a private island, a yacht, multi-million dollar homes and, presumably, the ability to live far away from anyone’s trash. 

Methane, seeping chemicals, stink and fire: even modern landfills are far from benign

Many of the people who live near GFL sites are not as fortunate. Despite our collective efforts to compost and recycle, landfills are still where the bulk of the 36 million tonnes of solid waste Canada generates each year winds up. No longer the open-pit garbage dumps of the past, the modern landfill typically has a liner system meant to prevent leachate (sometimes disgustingly described as garbage juice) from contaminating the soil and groundwater. They have systems to capture the gas created from decomposing waste, much of which is methane, a greenhouse gas that has much greater global warming potential, or ability to trap heat in the atmosphere, than carbon dioxide. Instead of great, haphazard heaps of it, trash is generally compacted systematically then covered with dirt or other material at the end of each day to keep odours and pests at bay. At the end of its lifespan, a modern landfill is closed, buried and turned into a grassy field. 

But the impact of landfills on the environment is still far from benign. Even the highest-quality lining can tear, allowing chemicals to seep into the ground. Coverings may minimize but not eliminate the stink. And gas-collecting systems don’t always capture 100 per cent of emissions. Despite ultimately being covered up by a grassy meadow, the mess still lurks below the surface. 

One big risk is fire, with the potential for flammable rubbish to come into contact with discarded batteries, or for chemical reactions to create sparks. The content of air pollution caused by these fires can vary widely, depending on what kind of waste a facility accepts, but can include small particulate matter, heavy metals and compounds like dioxins and furans that are linked to cancers, liver problems and other health problems. 

A simple Google search revealed news reports of at least 14 fires and one explosion that occurred at various GFL sites across Canada and the U.S. between 2020 and 2023 — that’s a rate of almost one every other month. These include an August 2022 blaze at a GFL recycling facility in Edmonton that reportedly lasted 20 hours before firefighters extinguished it, and a five-alarm blaze at a GFL recycling facility in B.C. in June 2021. B.C.’s Environment Ministry later issued GFL a non-compliance advisory letter for not reporting the spill of water that went into the ground when extinguishing it. 

Fires aren’t uncommon in the waste business. Nevertheless, waste expert Calvin Lakhan, a research scientist and director of the Circular Innovation Hub at York University, muttered “Wow,” when I mentioned how many fires at GFL facilities I found in my basic Google search. “That is a concerning amount,” he says.  

Beyond the fires, there are numerous incidents when GFL has failed to comply with environmental laws and regulations. 

In B.C.’s online Natural Resource Compliance and Enforcement Database, there are 25 records in which the company was found out-of-compliance in that province since 2018. Some of these are for issues like accepting waste materials that aren’t listed on its manifest. But others suggest a less hypothetical risk to the surrounding ecosystem. For example, in a March 2022 letter to the company, B.C.’s Environment Ministry noted that effluent  discharged at a GFL facility into a ditch network that fed into Abbotsford’s Lonzo Creek contained multiple chemicals, including ammonia, arsenic and iron, at levels that were well above water quality guidelines. In an email to The Local and The Narwhal, a ministry spokesperson said exceeding the guidelines doesn’t imply unacceptable risks exist. Rather, “the potential for adverse effects may be increased” and additional investigation may be needed.

As recently as April 3 of this year, another letter from the ministry stated the Abbotsford site was still out of compliance, and warned it could carry a fine of up to $1 million or up to six months in prison. (Such punishment is unlikely, though; contrary to that April letter, the ministry spokesperson’s email said the facility had been improved since 2022, and it appeared the issue had been resolved.)

In its 2021 report on hazardous spills, the office of the auditor general of Ontario said GFL was one of the “most frequent spillers” in that province. GFL is the only waste management company on the report’s list of 30 most frequent spillers, with 78 reported spills between 2016 and 2020. The auditor general’s office also pointed to GFL as an example of how Ontario’s Environment Ministry allows companies to continue operating and growing despite repeat offenses. Specifically in the township of North Stormont, southeast of Ottawa, the report stated, the ministry found GFL was contaminating surface water by repeatedly discharging treated leachate “at concentrations resulting in 10 per cent fish mortality.” The ministry also found GFL falsely reported test results showing zero per cent fish mortality, the report said. Despite violating its environmental approval, the auditor general’s office stated, the ministry granted new approvals to the company, including for the expansion of the very landfill where this issue was occurring.

Separately, GFL is listed on the federal environmental offenders registry, a public database of corporate convictions. The registry shows GFL pleaded guilty in 2018 to selling the chemical tetrachloroethylene to Ontario dry cleaners that lacked sufficient containment measures required by law. GFL was fined $300,000 for violating federal environmental regulations. 

Sampson County, North Carolina, is a predominantly Black, working-class community. A GFL site there is allegedly linked to the pollution of the community’s drinking wells, ground and surface water. Photo: Andrew Craft / The Local / The Narwhal

Environmental racism plays a part in where landfills are located

To those familiar with how waste management companies operate, these kinds of issues are not unusual in the sector. GFL’s competitors, including industry giant WM, formerly known as Waste Management, and Republic Services have also been tied to environmental problems, such as odour complaints, leachate issues and air-quality violations.  

“When you look through their track record, lawsuits, when you look through the complaints, when you look at how they treat their customers and all of this stuff, these companies are often very similar,” says Mary Finley-Brook, associate professor of geography, environment and sustainability at the University of Richmond in Virginia.

Finley-Brook believes that over time, as more environmental problems, like methane emissions and PFAS pollution, burble to the surface, we’ll discover that the industry has been able to get away with a lot. “There is not a huge amount of transparency and accountability,” she says. Understaffed regulators rely on companies’ self-reporting, says Finley-Brook. Inspections are infrequent, and harms to the environment are really only ever detected after the fact, when damage is already done.

Finley-Brook added that environmental racism or environmental colonialism is a persistent issue. The reality is that our convenience-loving society uses highly toxic materials and simply disposes of them in places where land is cheapest, often in communities of colour, of low wealth or of sparse population. Landfills and other waste facilities are often pitched to these communities as an opportunity for them to generate income, mainly from tax revenues or sometimes from other fees, like tipping fees, which are charges for disposing waste in a landfill. But companies often don’t pay the full cost, leaving communities on the hook for the costs of fires or other environmental damage. “People and communities are not valued equally,” says Finley-Brook. When a city needs some place to dump its waste, the thinking goes, what’s the big deal if an outlying community of only a few thousand people faces some odour problems?

Canada just pledged to tackle environmental racism. What does that mean?

It’s not just a matter of where all that waste goes, but what it comprises. In Ontario, Peter Hargreave, a long-time waste policy advisor and president of the consultancy Policy Integrity Inc., says there are fairly rigid requirements for waste management in the residential sector, where companies need to report the material they collect and process. But, he says, fewer requirements exist when it comes to managing commercial, institutional and industrial materials, which make up roughly 60 to 70 per cent of all non-hazardous waste.  

The use of cheap materials and the cost involved in sorting them mean a lot of waste gets mixed in together and isn’t properly processed, recycled or otherwise diverted from landfills. 

“There are incentives to make the wrong decisions because of the policies and economics that are in place right now,” Hargreave said.“I don’t think it’s a GFL issue. I think it’s a waste sector issue.”

But as GFL continues to grow, buying up competitors and expanding its services across the continent, the sheer number of spills, fires and records of non-compliance is hard to ignore.  

Lakhan, the research scientist at York, suggests the company’s aggressive growth may play a role in its environmental track record.

“They’ve kind of been known as focusing on expansion, but not necessarily on quality, if that makes sense,” Lakhan says. “GFL is known as kind of — I don’t want to characterize it as a bad player, but they’re known for playing fast and loose with the rules.”

Kathie Farraway stands outside GFL’s Stoney Creek landfill in Hamilton. Photo: Christopher Katsarov Luna / The Local / The Narwhal

On a brisk afternoon in March, a small group of protestors gathered on the shoulder of Highway 20, at the entrance of GFL’s Stoney Creek landfill in Hamilton. Passing motorists waved and honked as the protestors held up signs that read: “Gag For Life,” “Breathing Shouldn’t Hurt” and “Clean Air Is a Right, Not a Fight.”

Kathie Farraway has been living in this community, surrounded by open fields, for about 25 years. She didn’t even know she was living within hundreds of metres of a landfill until it suddenly started reeking last spring. Farraway says it got so bad, it made her vomit. Her neighbours complained of increased asthma attacks, sore throats and migraines.

The Stoney Creek landfill, which GFL acquired in 2022, is only meant to accept non-hazardous industrial waste, like excavation materials and by-products from steel production. It doesn’t take in garbage, according to its website, “so there are no garbage-related odours.” To be fair, that isn’t untrue; locals say the smell is more of a chemical-like mix of sulphur, gas and cat spray than the rotting-food odour of household garbage. 

In an online community meeting late this April, company officials told residents they still didn’t have a “cogent explanation” for what happened last spring, but said that the problem was being taken care of and the number of odour complaints it had received from the community had declined. Construction of a new cell for containing more waste was now underway, they said, and though they were confident they had set up proper measures, they said active landfills generate intermittent odours as part of normal operations. During the Victoria Day weekend, when temperatures climbed into the high 20s, some residents reported the stench had returned. 

In a subsequent online community meeting in May, company officials said the landfill was not the cause of the latest stink and emphasized there is no risk of exposure to toxic substances from the landfill.

Scenes from GFL’s Stoney Creek landfill in Hamilton, Ont. Photos: Christopher Katsarov Luna / The Local / The Narwhal

Resident Nelson Faria, however, says his main worry is what will happen years down the road; it’s only then that they’ll find out whether there are any long-term health consequences to whatever they’ve been breathing. “Forget about, you know, the value of your home,” says Faria, a father of three. “It’s your health that is the most concerning thing that we should be confronting.” 

For members of The Conservancy Initiative near GFL’s Arbor Hills landfill in Michigan, it’s not just the health of residents that’s a concern, but the health of the ecosystem, too. Through documents acquired through the Freedom of Information Act, the citizens’ group discovered that a stormwater pond at the landfill was being discharged into a spring-fed, cold-water trout stream called Johnson Creek. The documents revealed samples from that pond contained high levels of a type of synthetic, persistent chemicals called per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS. There are thousands of PFAS, which do not break down easily or quickly and are regarded as potentially hazardous to human health. According to Health Canada, they may affect the immune and nervous systems, the liver, kidney and thyroid, and the reproductive system. Despite the finding, no corrective action was taken, The Conservancy Initiative said.

Members of the group, including David Drinan and Leslie Evans, have since periodically collected samples of their own from Johnson Creek, and have had them tested, revealing that the contamination continues.

“It bothers me a lot, because … it’s a great, pristine, water source,” Drinan says. “And I guess I’ll be honest, it annoys me a little bit they’re a Canadian corporation.”

Besides the fact that the landfill is Canadian-owned, close to 25 per cent of the municipal and commercial waste it accepted in 2022 and about 14 per cent in 2023 was actually generated in Canada, according to the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy. (Michigan’s governor has recently proposed increasing tipping fees to discourage imported waste from being disposed of in the state.) Ontario landfills are expected to fill up within nine years. Even though major Canadian cities quit sending their waste across the border in 2010, industrial and commercial businesses in Ontario continue to do so, since it’s cheaper to dispose of it in the U.S. 

“They bring their trash over from Canada and they’re polluting our resources and nothing’s being done,” Drinan says.  

Meanwhile, in Paul Fisher’s neighbourhood in North Carolina, the community is eyeing legal action.

Maia Hutt, lawyer for the Southern Environmental Law Center, has visited the area multiple times. Her client, the non-profit Environmental Justice Community Action Network, is advocating on behalf of the local community. 

The intensity of the odour from the Sampson County landfill, located less than a mile from Fisher’s house, depends on which way the wind blows. But it’s noticeable even on “good days,” Hutt says.

More insidious is the pollution of the community’s drinking wells, ground and surface water — including Bearskin Swamp, one of the streams where Fisher used to go hunting and fishing — that is alleged to be linked to the GFL site. In their notice of intent to sue GFL, Hutt and her colleagues pointed out that tests by North Carolina’s Department of Environmental Quality found high levels of PFAS in the groundwater at the landfill, in the surface waters around the landfill and in private well water that residents drink and use for bathing and cleaning. The letter alleged that the landfill has accepted PFAS-laden waste from the DuPont chemical company and its spinoff Chemours for years. (DuPont and Chemours are notorious in the state for releasing PFAS into the environment.) 

Though the landfill had been accepting waste from DuPont before GFL acquired it, the letter alleges: “GFL’s handling, storage, treatment and disposal of PFAS-laden sludge and other solid waste has contaminated Bearskin Swamp and residential drinking water wells with toxic PFAS pollution.”

Fisher says many of his neighbours are sick. Some have breathing problems, many rely on kidney dialysis and some have different types of cancer. The Environmental Justice Community Action Network has also heard anecdotal stories from the community about their concerns about chronic illnesses. It’s unknown whether their illnesses are tied to the landfill.

Fundamentally, Hutt says, her clients want clean water — to be able to drink from their wells, and to fish and enjoy Bearskin Swamp again.

“And so, what would be required in order to do that is a full-scale clean-up,” Hutt says. If the contamination were found to be linked to the landfill, she says, “GFL would need to take some accountability and fully investigate and remediate.” 

In a later email, Hutt said she and her team were keeping an eye on GFL’s potential buyout. Regardless of whether GFL is acquired, “we will continue to seek justice for our clients,” she said. Hutt added that if GFL was responsible for the contamination, they would not be able to avoid accountability through a buyout.

“Forget about, you know, the value of your home,” says a father of three who lives near GFL’s Stoney Creek landfill in Hamilton, Ont. “It’s your health that is the most concerning thing that we should be confronting.” Photo: Christopher Katsarov Luna / The Local / The Narwhal

Despite non-compliance and environmental violations, Ontario lets GFL operate — and expand

GFL seems to be well aware that if pressed to clean up its operations, the associated costs could put a dent in its bottom line.

Among its “risks factors,” it stated in its 2022 annual report that it may be liable for damage or the release of pollutants. At times in the past, it said, having to respond to enforcement actions and certain litigation increased its costs and required it to “make significant capital investments” to upgrade its facilities. The company added if it failed to receive various approvals or permits, it could also face hurdles to establishing new or expanding existing facilities.

So far, though, consequences to the company appear to have been relatively mild. 

Despite its log of GFL’s non-compliance, B.C.’s Ministry of Environment said by email that it has not issued the company any administrative penalties, explaining “the company has taken those steps to comply with our requirements.”

In Ontario, an Environment Ministry spokesperson directed me to the government’s website for information on convictions for the past five years. I found only two records involving GFL there. One was a $343,000 fine in March 2023 for nine environmental violations, occurring from 2018 to 2020, at sites in Toronto and Dorchester, in Ontario’s Middlesex County. The other was a $130,000 fine this May for violations occurring between April 2020 and November 2021 at its Unwin Avenue waste transfer facility near Toronto’s Cherry Beach. These fines are nominal, compared with GFL’s revenues.

Since the auditor general’s report documenting GFL’s repeat offenses was published in 2021, the ministry said it has granted GFL 49 approvals allowing it to continue or expand its operations. A company’s past history of non-compliance doesn’t result in an automatic denial of its application for approval, the ministry said. Rather, an appointed ministry director makes “site-specific decisions” for each application after a detailed review. In response to questions specifically about the auditor general’s report that GFL had given false test results on fish mortality, the ministry said that the company had confirmed the error was the result of clerical oversight and had rectified the issue. GFL has now become so big, and the sector has become so consolidated, that to some extent we’re all at its mercy. Lakhan, the researcher and scientist at York University, pointed out GFL’s growth has been financed by debt, an issue that has raised questions in the past about the company’s financial position. GFL reported total long-term debt of $8.8 billion for the year ended December 2023. Until recently, S&P Global Ratings gave it a credit rating of BB-, or “junk” status. That was upgraded to B+ this April.

Since the start of 2020, GFL has lost $2.2 billion, The Globe reported, noting it has lately become vulnerable to buyout offers amid investors’ worries about its debt load.

All of this matters for our waste management system because GFL is Ontario’s largest service provider, Lakhan says. “So if they face any economic constraints that threatened the operations of their business, the direct impact is that our waste-handling system begins to fail.”

Landfills are big business because of how much waste we make

The last time Torontonians were forced to confront the sheer magnitude of the waste they produce was during the 2009 municipal workers’ strike, when mountains of garbage accumulated in temporary drop-off sites throughout the city, attracting pests and causing an eye-watering stink. It was, perhaps, the closest Toronto got to sampling what Paul Fisher and his neighbours in Sampson County, N.C., report living with on a daily basis. 

It’s tempting to turn to recycling as the solution to our waste problem. (GFL, too, has indicated it is looking to grow its recycling business.) But the reality is that recycling isn’t as sustainable or effective as most of us would like to think. A lot of newer packaging materials, such as lightweight plastics, can’t be sorted at conventional recycling facilities, Lakhan explained, which drives up the overall costs. While almost all Canadian households actively recycle, about 70 per cent of the solid waste we generate, including recyclable materials and food waste, end up in landfills anyway. And the savings in carbon emissions aren’t nearly as much as people would expect. 

When it comes to encouraging GFL and other waste management companies to cause less pollution, rigorous oversight may be one place to start. Speaking specifically about Ontario, NDP MPP Sandy Shaw, the province’s official opposition environment critic, says when the government shows it doesn’t care about the environment, it sets the tone for everyone else.

“Why would a company comply when the government just basically is turning aside and saying, ‘Well, we’re not really serious about you having to comply?’ ” Shaw says. “Why would a company go the extra mile [when] it costs them money?”

There’s a facet of our waste problem, though, that goes even deeper than the need for stricter regulations and stronger enforcement. It’s the fact we’re producing far too much of it. 

The landfills owned by GFL are built to be fed. Every garbage day, a caravan of vivid green GFL trucks make their way across the city, hauling away our empty take-out containers and chip bags, our broken mugs and dryer lint. Once out of our hands, it becomes someone else’s problem. And no matter how green the method of managing it, the environmental impact will be felt someplace else, in the air, the ground or in the water. 

GFL’s business is to take our waste and deal with the mess elsewhere. With a burst of green marketing, a company slogan or a sustainability pledge, it can convince us that we can keep creating mountains of garbage, yet still be green for life. And business, so far, shows no sign of slowing. 

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