Ontario’s public service employees are back in the office this month, a change from a pandemic-era policy that offered flexible workday structures. That could have big impacts on commuters, especially around Toronto. And where do the Ford government’s highway plans fit in? What about emissions from all these extra cars on the roads? I spoke with The Narwhal’s Ontario reporter Fatima Syed about what it all means for our latest explainer video.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Ford government wants to expand highways and roads, but more lanes simply means more cars on the road — a concept known as induced demand. Photo: Carlos Osorio / The Narwhal

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

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

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

Research shows more highways don’t fix traffic congestion. So why is Ontario still building them?

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

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

Even though the Ford government says it’s investing in “the largest transit expansion in North America,” buses, subways and light-rail transit continue to be overpacked and limited for people commuting across the Greater Toronto Area. Photo: Carlos Osorio / The Narwhal

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

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

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

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

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

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

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We all eat and drink. And some time later, the excess must come out the other end. But where do you “go” in Toronto, especially if you’re in the city’s parks? 

The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the lack of public washrooms in the city. Cafés and libraries were closed and so were their washrooms. More businesses put up door or window signs stating their washrooms are for customers only. When nature called the options for excreta depended on sex. For women it usually meant holding it. Men had it easier due to their plumbing — with a bush or the side of a building offering enough cover. 

“Clean washrooms make parks accessible and inviting for immigrants,” my colleague at University of Toronto, Ambika Tenneti, said. Her PhD research looked at strategies to engage newcomers in urban forests. In other words: how to increase the connections between people and nature for new Canadians. “In my focus groups the women said we need more washrooms for females. The lines are too long. In multi-generational families, the women often have to take the children or the elders to the washrooms. Men don’t have to do that. There is never a lineup for the men’s toilets. Clean washrooms also make the parks feel safe for immigrants.”

Public washrooms in the city’s parks are maintained by Toronto’s Parks and Recreation division. Some of the washrooms are seasonal, opening from spring to fall each year. Some of the washrooms are more than 50 years old, are not winterized and thus closed to prevent frost damage to pipes and wiring. Where are people supposed to “go” in the winter when the bladder or the belly needs relief?

Toronto has hundreds of parks for people to enjoy. But for some, a lack of adequate washroom facilities is a barrier to accessing the city’s green spaces. Photo: Kamran Jebreili / The Associated Press

The lack of public washrooms was emphasized in a report by Toronto Public Space Committee. This volunteer collective of people are “passionate about public space,” including public washrooms. In 2021 the group published “Gotta Go TO: A Public Washroom Strategy for Toronto.” The report called for the city to invest in public washrooms, not just for health and hygiene reasons but as a basic civic service. 

The same year the city launched the Park Washroom Enhancement Program, with the goal of upgrading or rebuilding 125 park washrooms over a decade. This work is now underway, but it can’t come soon enough — or in enough places. The new washrooms will be open year-round. What a relief it will be for park users. “Washrooms are one of the top five priorities when planning a hike,” said Laura Strachan, the board chair of Let’s Hike T.O., a “hiking community in Toronto open to everyone with a focus on people of colour, newcomers and young adults.” 

“We could do longer hikes and have more events in the parks all year if there were open washrooms,” Strachan said. “Now we have to limit our hikes to five kilometres. We could increase it to 12 kilometres or more if there were washrooms. You can tell where the good spots are for washrooms in the parks because you see the used toilet paper or Kleenex there. It’s gross.”

Public washrooms in Toronto have always been a delicate subject. Toronto the Good — an old moniker from when the city was stuffy, monochromatic and presumably godly — didn’t plan for where to expel the excreta. The first public washroom opened in the city in 1896. It was for men only. Women had to fight to get a public washroom. There was a brief interest in building more public washrooms but this ended in the 1920s, thanks to NIMBYism — or “not in my backyard” enthusiasts — from businesses and residents, and lack of interest from politicians. 

Park People, a non-profit agency that advocates for public parks in Canada, noted in its 2023 Canadian City Park Report that public washrooms were the top amenity its survey respondents said they would like to see more of in parks.

In Toronto, Park People partnered with the city to launch the InTO the Ravines program in 2020. This aims to get more under-served communities to know, enjoy and therefore protect the ravines — the wondrous necklace of green river valleys in the city. Whether it’s picnics for a birthday party, barbecues with friends or guided winter walks along the nature trails, it is easier for community groups to like and appreciate the ravines when the public washrooms are open, clean and safe.

“You have to strategize before you even go out to the park. Don’t drink a lot before you go. When organizing events, it becomes even more complex as the group of people literally have nowhere to ‘go,’ ” said Minaz Asani-Kanji, a co-founder of Good Futures Collective, a consulting group that specializes in environmental and community-led research.

How to have your period in the woods

In 2012, Canada signed a UN agreement that affirmed access to washrooms was a basic human right. The UN has since clarified that the right applies in public spaces including parks. The City of Toronto is doing a series of public consultations to review its Parkland Strategy — the long-term planning process for the city’s parks. The review includes community engagement sessions to gather feedback from various users of the parks. I went to one held by Black Environmental Initiative, a non-profit agency.

“I am not surprised that toilets came up in the conversations,” Muzamil Gadain, the project leader at Black Environmental Initiative, said. “It’s one of the most pressing issues that people have with the parks and their facilities.”

Washrooms need to be functional, but the design does not have to be Toronto’s usual brand — utilitarian and about as graceful as a pig on ice skates. Thankfully, the city seems to be coming around to this. Toronto Public Space Committee recently picked three top designs in its TO the Loo!: Toronto Toilet Design Challenge. The designs ranged from the elegant to pop-art inspired. Public washrooms in parks can be both useful and beautiful. Most importantly they must be open, year-round.

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Premier Doug Ford is gearing up for a fight after a judge pumped the brakes on his government’s plan to remove some Toronto bike lanes. 

On Wednesday, Ford left open the possibility of invoking the notwithstanding clause to ensure his government retains the authority to remove bike lanes it disapproves of. 

“Let’s see what happens at the Court of Appeal, and then we’ll go from there,” he said at an unrelated announcement in Thornhill, Ont. 

Ford criticized Justice Paul Schabas’ decision as the “most ridiculous” he’s ever seen. 

“You talk about the Charter? It’s trampling on the democratic rights of Ontarians that elected a government, just a few months before … that said they’re going to move, not eliminate … bike lanes from the main arterial roads,” Ford said. 

Ford, however, struck a confident tone and said he has confidence the Court of Appeal will rule in his government’s favour. 

In 2024, the Conservatives passed a bill to advance highway construction and reduce bike lanes. Protests erupted in Toronto, where residents were concerned about the number of people that use cycling infrastructure and its positive impacts on the city. Photo: Sid Naidu / The Narwhal

Using the notwithstanding clause would allow the government to push through the removals, regardless of what the three-judge panel at the Court of Appeals says. 

In his July 30 ruling, Justice Schabas wrote “the evidence is clear” that “restoring a lane of motor vehicle traffic … will create greater risk to cyclists and to other users of the road.” 

Schabas’ decision didn’t hinge on whether he thought citizens had a right to bike lanes. Instead, it revolved around whether the government’s arguments for removing the lanes — and causing harm to non-driving road users — was based in fact. 

The government’s central point was that removing the bike lanes on Yonge Street, University Avenue and Bloor Street would reduce congestion. That, according to Schabas, was predicated on “weak anecdotal evidence and expert opinion,” which was “unsupported, unpersuasive and contrary to the consensus view of experts.”

He wrote that “there is no evidence that the government based its decision on data, manuals or expert ‘highway engineering,’ or that its decision would ‘contribute to highway safety.’ ”

“Rather, the evidence is to the contrary,” he wrote.

Ford is no stranger to using — or threatening to use — the notwithstanding clause, a constitutional provision that was previously taboo in Ontario politics. 

He was the first premier in the province’s history to invoke the clause, which has been in place since 1982. 

Ontario’s Bill 212 passed: Highway 413 is in and bike lanes are out. What now?

In 2018, he threatened to invoke the clause to reduce the number of Toronto city council members from 47 to 25. Doing so was ultimately unnecessary because the Court of Appeal upheld Queen’s Park’s authority to make the council change.

In 2021, the Superior Court struck down Ford’s attempt to extend third-party election spending limits to 12 months, up from six months. Ford recalled the legislature and passed the bill with the notwithstanding clause — marking the first time in provincial history the clause was actually used. 

Then, in 2022, Ford used the clause to ban education workers from striking after contract negotiations broke down. That sparked intense public backlash and Ford repealed the bill days later.

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

The province said the newly-passed Bill 17 will take away the city’s authority to enforce key parts of the Toronto Green Standard for buildings — though the city continues to deny the law will have any impact.

A spokesperson for Rob Flack, Ontario’s Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing, said in a statement that the act — which aims to speed up housing and infrastructure development by doing away with many local planning rules — would render mandatory parts of the standard unenforceable.  

“Our government’s legislation, the Protect Ontario by Building Faster and Smarter Act, standardizes construction requirements and provides consistency, clarifying that no municipality has the authority to enforce a by-law that supersedes the Ontario Building Code,” spokesperson Alexandra Sanita wrote. 

“Through these changes, the City of Toronto’s Tier 1 of the Green Building Standard would not be allowed as they mandate requirements for new development planning applications that go beyond the Ontario building code.” 

The Toronto Green Standard are a set of city rules that require housing developers to implement eco-friendly design features in new buildings. 

The standard consists of four tiers, with Tier 1 being a mandatory list of assets developers must incorporate within new developments. This includes adding bicycle parking and electric vehicle charging stations to new buildings over four storeys, and taking steps to mitigate flooding and extreme heat, for instance, by building rooftop gardens and planting trees. 

Tiers 2 through 4, while not mandatory, provide developers with financial incentives to take on more ambitious climate targets. Developers can get a portion of the development charge fees they pay to the city refunded for achieving these higher targets. 

According to the provincial spokesperson, Tiers 2 to 4 “will not be affected” by Bill 17.

City pushes back on province’s interpretation of law

Despite the province’s statement, a spokesperson for the City of Toronto denied that Bill 17 will have any impact on the municipality’s ability to enforce the Toronto Green Standard, reiterating findings from a staff report earlier this week. 

Ontario developers sue Toronto over green building standards

“City staff have reviewed Bill 17 and determined that there is no impact to the City’s ability to continue to apply the [standard] to new development,” the spokesperson told TorontoToday. 

Last week, the city released an assessment of the impact of Bill 17, which pushed back on the idea that local authority over the standard could be restricted. 

“Recent media reports have suggested that Bill 17 has impacted or restricted a municipalities [sic] ability to apply the [Toronto Green Standard],” the report read, going on to deny there would be any impact. 

The city’s executive committee received the report on June 16. 

Experts previously raised concerns over Bill 17

Before the bill was passed on June 3, experts speculated a provision that updates the Building Code Act of 1992 could bring an end to the Toronto Green Standard.

The provision says municipalities do not have the authority to “pass by-laws respecting the construction or demolition of buildings.” 

Some legal professionals interpreted this phrase to mean that Ontario cities would no longer have the authority to enforce sustainable design standard.

“This would appear to make green building standards obsolete and ensure that the same standard (the [Ontario Building Code]) apply province wide,” lawyers from Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt LLP wrote in May. 

Environmental experts had also raised alarm that Toronto Green Standard would be “deeply undercut.”

Additionally, the president of an organization representing Ontario’s residential construction industry argued the law was intended to override the standard. 

“No municipality has the right to choose not to implement legislation irrespective of how unappealing it may appear to them,” Richard Lyall, president of the Residential Construction Council of Ontario, wrote in a letter to the city’s executive committee last week. 

Lyall referenced comments made by Minister Flack in the Ontario Legislature, when he spoke about the need to make building standard across the province consistent. 

“It’s bureaucratic; it’s red tape; it isn’t working,” Flack said during legislative debates in early June, adding that green standard are “part of the slowness of getting houses built.”

“That is why we brought Bill 17 forward; that is why we are going to have one code in this province, not hundreds of iterations,” Flack said.

The Residential Construction Council of Ontario is also currently engaged in a legal battle with the city over the Toronto Green Standard. In December, the industry group asked the Ontario Superior Court of Justice to block the city from enforcing construction standards that go beyond the Ontario Building Code. 

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

Last summer, southern Ontario was rocked by massive floods that led to more than $1 billion in damages.

It was the type of disaster that unfortunately could become increasingly familiar as the risk of flooding rises with climate change.

But there are solutions at hand. I caught up with Ontario reporter Fatima Syed — who “literally watched water come up through the drain” in the parking lot of her Mississauga residence — to learn about how we can better plan for a world with more severe weather events.

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Ontario developers have launched a legal challenge against the City of Toronto, questioning its authority to impose construction “green standards”— rules to ensure new buildings are energy efficient, minimize emissions and accomodate pedestrians and bikes. 

The Residential Construction Council of Ontario — a non-profit industry association representing residential builders — filed the challenge at the Ontario Superior Court on Nov. 19. In it, the association argues the City of Toronto is overstepping its powers by enacting rules over “the manner of construction and construction standards.” 

The association is asking the provincial court to prohibit the city from imposing those standards and any others in the future that would dictate construction requirements beyond the Ontario building code. Close to 30 municipalities have instituted such standards in recent years, as the Doug Ford government has delayed introducing them provincially in its push to speed up housing development.

Richard Lyall, president of the Residential Construction Council of Canada, told The Narwhal the green standards are making building housing “more complicated” at a time when the province is facing a housing shortage. 

“This [legal challenge] was a last resort,” he said in an interview. “We’re pro-green buildings but let’s have a common set of standards. We don’t need each municipality cooking their own system and forcing builders to follow it.”  

“It’s frustrating, believe me,” he added. “We don’t want to do this. We don’t want to take the City of Toronto to court and get a judgment, but we feel we don’t have an alternative and things are getting crazy enough.”

In an emailed statement to The Narwhal, the City of Toronto said it would respond to the legal challenge “in due course,” adding the Toronto Green Standard is updated every four years, with the next update scheduled for next fall. 

Ontario developers say green building standards in cities like Toronto have increased the costs of construction. Photo: Christopher Katsarov Luna / The Narwhal

Two sources familiar with the matter but unauthorized to speak about it publicly told The Narwhal the lawsuit took city and industry officials by surprise.

The sources said representatives of the construction council and city officials have been in “semi-regular conversations” about the next iteration of the Toronto Green Standards for the past several months, which the sources characterized as “productive.” In addition to creating climate-specific requirements for all new developments in the city, the current standards offer financial incentives to developers to encourage energy efficient, low emissions buildings. 

Buildings are the third largest source of carbon emissions in Ontario, with heating, cooling and other daily functions accounting for 24 per cent of the province’s total emissions. In 2020, the province’s auditor general found the government wasn’t doing enough to address building emissions, noting various ministries “do not … effectively oversee, evaluate and improve the performance of programs to support and encourage reducing energy use in buildings.” 

Lyall described the auditor general’s findings as “an argument without any basis in fact,” saying he “did not agree.” In his opinion, Ontario’s building code is “one of the greenest in the country.”

Many cities had a different response. Since the auditor general’s report, Toronto and close to 30 municipalities — including Ottawa, Brampton, Ajax, Whitby, Pickering, Halton Hills, Markham, Richmond Hill, and most recently, Mississauga, Brampton and Caledon — have filled the provincial gap by instituting city-specific rules for climate-resilient construction that go beyond Ontario’s building code.

Toronto homes can’t go carbon-neutral unless developers get on board

Over the years, developers have pushed back against these rules, which they argue increase construction costs at a time when the province desperately needs more housing. The tensions came to a head in April when the Residential Construction Council of Ontario threatened legal action, questioning whether cities have the legislative authority to create municipal conditions for building permit approvals.

That threat seemed idle — until now. Conversations between the construction council and the City of Toronto “seemed fine,” one of two sources who spoke to The Narwhal about the issue said. “There appeared to be progress,” the second source said. Both said the council didn’t express specific concerns about the Toronto Green Standards, just general worries about the challenging environment they work in, and the need to be able to build without red tape. 

The lawsuit came “out of nowhere,” both sources told The Narwhal. 

Lyall said the conversations have been “frustrating” for the council because of a “difference in the realities.” He said developers face a series of challenges — including rising development charges, taxation and construction costs — that make it difficult to build housing. Green standards add to that burden by specifying mandatory building materials and moving heating and cooling systems away from natural gas and towards electricity, he said. 

“The biggest problem is we are falling off a cliff,” he said. “This [legal challenge] is just one of many things we’re trying to address.”  

In its push to build houses, Ontario says energy efficiency has to wait

The lawsuit is the latest attack on municipal green standards. In 2022, the Doug Ford government tried to remove city authority to impose green standards, saying it would help speed up the construction of homes. The government reversed this move after pushback from city staff. At the time, a group of 50 engineers said green standards have “been successful in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and stormwater runoff from new buildings, as well as reducing the urban heat island effect” — the term for how concrete and asphalt trap heat, which can be offset by natural features like trees, water and unpaved areas. 

The two sources told The Narwhal the developer association’s lawsuit could have a chilling effect on local climate action, making Ontario cities hesitant to propose new green standards or strengthen existing ones.  

If successful, the lawsuit “will set us back in our ability to address climate change in Ontario cities,” one source said. “If Toronto Green Standards go, they all go.”

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When I first started riding my bike in Toronto eight years ago, it was because I had no other choice.

I was entering my third year of university, desperate for a way to get around after spending the first half of my undergrad rationing transit tokens. There were times when I couldn’t afford the $3.25 it would cost me to get on the subway to visit family. When I got a job that paid a bit better, it was farther away and I couldn’t pay for the monthly transit pass that would allow me to commute there. 

So, bike it was. Even when I fell while riding in a blizzard, even when I narrowly avoided getting run over on roads without protected bike lanes, I pedalled on. It was the only way I could afford to get around.

I’ve been thinking about those days a lot this month, in the wake of news that Premier Doug Ford is looking at limiting where cities can build new bike lanes, a move he claims will improve traffic. He cited two existing bike lanes as examples, the ones on Toronto’s University Avenue and Bloor Street West. He passes by them regularly, commuting from his home to Queen’s Park. Full disclosure, so do I — just on two wheels instead of four.

“We want to make sure that all forms of transportation move quickly, and that’s what it comes down to — making sure you aren’t putting bike lanes in the middle of some of the busiest streets in the country,” Ford told reporters last week. He added that bike lanes should go on side streets instead, a plan that critics say will not work in most areas, and backed up the proposal with justifications that don’t stand up to a fact check. 

Restricting new bike lanes is obviously a bad idea in terms of public safety: there will always be people who, like my 20-year-old self, have no choice but to cycle on main streets. Forcing them to ride in car traffic can have deadly consequences — we’ve seen it in Belleville, Guelph, Elora, Niagara and Toronto in the last month alone. 

It’s also not going to make Toronto’s god-awful gridlock any better. One look at the bike lanes on Bloor will tell you it probably isn’t the cyclists zipping by in a narrow lane that are causing the issue. It’s the cars filling the vast majority of the space. Bikes may be an easy strawman, but blaming them without evidence just inflames tensions on the road — and distracts us from finding real solutions. 

This isn’t a matter of bikes versus cars, it’s fact: we know from decades of research that more car lanes encourage more people to drive, which makes traffic worse in the long run. It’s the same reason Ford’s other ideas for relieving traffic congestion — most recently a tunnel under Highway 401 that would likely cost billions, and two highways running through Ontario’s Greenbelt —  won’t help either. 

Decades of evidence shows that giving cars more room — say, by eliminating bike lanes or building tunnels beneath existing highways — doesn’t help traffic. Roads may get clearer in the short term but will ultimately end up just as bad as they were before. Photo: Katherine Cheng / The Narwhal

We also know the same concept works in reverse. If you take away a lane of car traffic, it will encourage people to leave their car at home and find different ways to move around. With improved public transit options or safe bike lanes, they wouldn’t have to look too far.

Every cyclist on the road means one less person in a car, taxi or rideshare — or one less passenger on public transit, which is more crowded and less reliable than it used to be. 

It’s also pretty obvious that fewer vehicles on the road means fewer emissions spewing into our air that are bad for our health and the climate. 

There will always be people who need to drive to get around Toronto. But the roads and our air will be clearer for everybody if those of us who can use other options do. 

Research shows more highways don’t fix traffic congestion. So why is Ontario still building them?

Ford does understand the importance of bike lanes, or at least he used to: “You’re nervous when there’s not bike lanes, at least I was,” he told TVO in 2017 after trying out cycling near Queen’s Park. He also campaigned on promises to put money back in people’s pockets, and biking is one of the cheapest ways to get around, requiring no fare or fuel. 

So why is Ford doing this now? Maybe it’s because bike lanes have become an ideological wedge that he hopes will win him another election. Maybe because real solutions to traffic are complicated and often unpopular — like congestion pricing, which is proven to work. 

Either way, the truth will be clear in a few years, when few new bike lanes are in sight through the gridlock. 

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

When an oil spill leached into two Toronto creeks last summer, the cleanup didn’t totally go as planned. Despite the efforts to contain it, the spill reached Lake Ontario — a source of drinking water for 9 million people.

The spill started on Aug. 11, 2023, after a massive fire broke out at a facility in northwest Toronto owned by chemical distributor Brenntag Canada. It took firefighters several days and huge amounts of water and firefighting foam to douse the flames. Within hours, contaminated runoff from the site — an oily brown sludge — started flowing into sewers and then Mimico and Humber creeks, the latter a tributary feeding into the larger Humber River. Both the river and Mimico Creek flow into Lake Ontario.

Through an internal provincial spill report and a second document that was made public by the ministry last November, The Narwhal has pieced together how that slurry made its way 12 kilometres downstream to the lake.

Incident reports are prepared by staff at the Environment Ministry’s Spills Action Centre, a 24-7 hotline that takes reports of chemical spills and keeps records of how they’re contained and cleaned up. The Narwhal accessed the report through freedom of information legislation.

The reports aren’t a perfect picture of everything that happens in response to a spill, but they do offer a window into how different governments react, and the steps taken to clean up an environmental mess.

In the case of the Brenntag fire and ensuing contamination, that snapshot shows how the efforts of hundreds of people — from Brenntag, to their contractors to all levels of government — worked to ensure the damage from the spill wasn’t as bad as it could have been. It also shows instances where some agencies made mistakes, or were slow or unable to respond, causing delays and problems. 

Under Ontario law, companies who spill — in this case, Brenntag, which hired contractor GFL Environmental to conduct the work on its behalf — are responsible for the cleanup. The provincial Environment Ministry is responsible for overseeing the process and stepping in if needed. The ministry declined to answer questions about the incident from The Narwhal, including whether it issued any fines or penalties to any of the entities involved in the spill cleanup.

Here’s a look at some of the problems highlighted in the province’s incident report.

The spill on Mimico and Humber creeks last summer started at a Brenntag Canada facility. Eventually, some oil travelled downstream on Mimico Creek and entered Lake Ontario at Humber Bay Park. Map: Shawn Parkinson / The Narwhal

After spill reached Lake Ontario, ministry incident report alleges GFL failed to uphold cleanup commitment

Problems in the cleanup of the spill from the Brenntag fire started on the first day, when the Environment Ministry told GFL to install booms and hay-bales along Humber Creek to soak up oil and keep it from flowing downstream. “GFL admitted to forgetting and is currently arranging crews to attend,” the incident report reads.

Later, on Aug. 17, 2023, the incident report says members of the public complained to the ministry about “hydrocarbon sludge” that GFL spilled on the ground at Echo Valley Park, one of several public parks along Mimico Creek where crews staged cleanup work. “GFL is aware of spillage of sludge to roadway,” the incident report reads, adding that the company planned to clean it up the next morning.

And when rain fell on the night of Aug. 18 — a “moderate” weather event, according to the ministry’s public November 2023 report on the spill, and one that had been forecast for days — it was the booms installed by GFL along Mimico Creek that breached, allowing oil to reach Lake Ontario, according to the incident report.

The report doesn’t shed light on what caused the booms to give out. GFL didn’t answer emails and a voicemail from The Narwhal. The Environment Ministry didn’t answer questions about how it checked that GFL’s work was sufficient.

An August 2023 oil spill, stemming from a fire at the Brenntag chemical facility in northwest Toronto, left an oily sheen along Mimico Creek and its mouth at Lake Ontario. Brown sludge was also reported in Mimico and Humber creeks. Photo: Cole Burston / The Canadian Press

Ashley Wallis, an associate director at the charity Environmental Defence, who has pushed for transparency about the Brenntag spill, told The Narwhal crews should have been able to come up with containment measures that can withstand rain. “I think that’s quite shameful,” she said, adding that similar storms are pretty typical for Toronto in August.

The following morning, ministry environmental officers were on site at Humber Bay Park, where Mimico Creek meets the lake. They recorded their sightings of the oily plume in the water — and they also saw GFL failing to uphold one more commitment, the report says. 

According to the incident report, the company had pledged to have three trucks on site at Humber Bay Park at all times to vacuum up contaminated muck. But it only had one, which was sitting idle, according to the incident report.

‘Containment breached’: how an oil spill in northwest Toronto made its way to Lake Ontario

One officer emailed the company on Aug. 19 to remind them to “take more action at this critical time,” the incident report says. “It was critical that the oil behind the booms remain contained and removed ASAP at[sic] there was a risk that a rain event would cause the oil to be discharged into the lake.”

GFL president Patrick Dolvigi, who is listed as the media contact on the company’s website, didn’t respond to detailed questions from The Narwhal about the ministry’s version of events, documented in the report. 

Brenntag didn’t directly answer when asked if the company was satisfied with GFL’s work on the spill, but in an email, spokesperson Robert Reitze said GFL’s crews worked around the clock in the wake of the incident.

“The cleanup work along the creeks and lakeshore was always responsive to changing conditions,” Reitze wrote.

Mimico Creek winds through quiet neighbourhoods, city parks, golf courses and industrial areas before emptying into Lake Ontario at Humber Bay Park. Photos: Christopher Katsarov Luna / The Narwhal

Toronto Water was ‘failing to do the things they were directed to do’: incident report

On Aug. 15, 2023, four days after the spill started, Toronto Water — a department of the City of Toronto that’s responsible for drinking water, stormwater and sewage — also failed to do what the Environment Ministry instructed it to, according to the incident report.

Toronto Water was supposed to help install dams to contain the sludge on Humber Creek. But ministry staff reported back that this hadn’t happened, allowing the contamination to move farther downstream. “The two dams that were requested had not been started,” the incident report says. “It is evident that Toronto Water is failing to do the things they were directed to do.”

Later that day, the ministry removed Toronto Water from its duties on Humber Creek and asked GFL to step in. GFL was able to complete the dams in the end, which helped prevent oil from spilling from the creek into the Humber River during the rainstorm on Aug. 18. 

The day after oil from the Brenntag spill reached Humber Bay Park, a farmers’ market and recreational boaters got in the way of cleanup. Photo: Christopher Katsarov Luna / The Narwhal

Ministry struggled to get traffic control help during spill response

In the days immediately following the Brenntag fire, the Environment Ministry called on Toronto Police Services twice for help controlling traffic that was getting in the way of cleanup crews.

The first time, Toronto police told the ministry they were too busy to assist. The second time, police put the ministry staffer who called on hold. That staffer hung up after 15 minutes, and the incident report doesn’t mention the police again.

Toronto police spokesperson Stephanie Sayer said the service received more than 6,500 calls for help the day of the Spills Action Centre’s first call, making it busier than average.

“Although we strive to assist our partner agencies when requested, responding to urgent policing calls takes priority, and we are receiving and attending more emergency calls than ever before,” Sayer said. 

On Aug. 19, 2023, a Saturday morning, the Spills Action Centre had to get assistance from Toronto Parks and Recreation to block off parts of Humber Bay Park, where a farmers’ market was set up in the main parking lot. It was the day after oil from the spill hit Lake Ontario, and efforts to vacuum up contaminated muck were well underway.

The 2023 spill into Mimico Creek wasn’t the first time oil has ended up in the waterway. Critics say, given all of the urban development along the watershed, the province and the City of Toronto need to have better plans for responding to spills. Photos: Photo: Christopher Katsarov Luna / The Narwhal

Crews trying to get out on the water to gather up globs of the oil also found themselves sharing the park’s launch with recreational boaters, despite GFL telling people not to use it, according to the incident report. At one point, people also parked all around GFL’s equipment, blocking workers from getting to it.

“GFL is seeking a direct/backdoor number for City of Toronto Parks, to close the Humber Bay Park, as there is all types of traffic in the park at this time that is hindering the cleanup,” the incident report says.

The incident report doesn’t detail how the situation was resolved, and the City of Toronto didn’t answer questions about what happened and why it didn’t proactively close the park once it learned of the spill.

Ontario’s Environment Ministry didn’t respond to questions from The Narwhal about the status of cleanup along Mimico Creek and Lake Ontario, but according to Brenntag, the cleanup was completed in December 2023. Photo: Christopher Katsarov Luna / The Narwhal

Ontario was ‘hoping for a more timely response’ from the Canadian Coast Guard

The day the spill reached Lake Ontario, the Spills Action Centre also tried to get help from the Canadian Coast Guard, which has a mandate to respond to pollution on Canadian waters. 

The Coast Guard employee who took the call, a response specialist based several hours away in Sarnia, Ont., told the ministry it would have to submit a written request for help and that the matter was “above her pay grade,” the provincial incident report says.

“We were hoping for a more timely response,” the Spills Action Centre employee responded. The Coast Guard’s “resources were kind of scattered and a field response would possibly take some time to coordinate,” according to the incident report. In the end, the ministry didn’t submit a formal request for the Coast Guard’s help.

Jeremy Hennessy, a spokesperson for the Canadian Coast Guard, said in an email that the agency’s resources are only scattered in the sense that they’re “located across the province, but not in a disorganized state.” 

On warm summer days, Humber Bay Park is full of people walking their dogs and eating ice cream by the shore as they take in views of Toronto’s skyline. After an oil spill reached these waters last summer, provincial and municipal governments said beaches and drinking water weren’t at risk and decided not to notify park-goers. Photo: Christopher Katsarov Luna / The Narwhal

The Coast Guard doesn’t have staff who can respond to environmental hazards in the Toronto area. The nearest staff and equipment are located at bases on Lake Huron or the St. Lawrence River. “Travel to the Toronto area from any of these locations would take a few hours,” Hennessy said, adding that local fire departments and chemical-handling facilities are often better positioned to respond.  

“It’s important to remember, like all first responders, we cannot be everywhere at once,” Hennessy said.

Hennessy also said the Coast Guard was told the Mimico Creek spill originated on land, and therefore, was outside of the agency’s mandate.

“The Canadian Coast Guard confirmed it would provide assistance to the Ontario Ministry of the Environment, Conservation and Parks if a request were made,” he said.

“No further action was taken, as the incident was not within its mandate and no request for assistance was received … As it currently stands — as it did on Aug. 18, 2023 — the Canadian Coast Guard is in a strong position to help.”

Ashley Wallis, an associate director at the charity Environmental Defence, told The Narwhal crews should have been able to come up with containment measures that can withstand the type of rainstorm that caused oil to spill into Lake Ontario. “I think that’s quite shameful,” she said. Photos: Christopher Katsarov Luna / The Narwhal

Mimico Creek looks cleaner now, but monitoring continues

Nearly a year after the spill, Mimico Creek appears to be mostly back to normal. The globs of sludge and containment booms are long gone, and water birds like ducks and herons can be seen in the water at Humber Bay Park. 

Brenntag says its cleanup work was finished on Dec. 8, 2023, and the company is now moving ahead with a restoration plan. 

The Environment Ministry didn’t respond to questions from The Narwhal about the status of the cleanup, and it’s unclear whether it’s even possible for crews to remove all of the contamination in Humber and Mimico creeks and Lake Ontario. However, in its November 2023 report, the ministry says it plans to do testing and visual observations to confirm the results of the cleanup. Monitoring at the site will continue into 2025, the report says.

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

The cleanup was finally starting to move along.

It had been nearly a week since an enormous fire broke out at a chemical company in northwest Toronto. A week since a smelly, brown sludge from the site began surging into city sewers, then cascading into waterways.

The toxic goop was made of oil from the burnt building — owned by chemical distributor Brenntag — mixed in with firefighting foam and the untold litres of water used to douse the flames. As it trickled past neighbourhoods, city parks and golf courses, it killed wildlife and stained rocks. 

The mucky runoff was flowing into Mimico Creek. The contaminants also drained into Humber Creek, a tributary of the larger Humber River. Both waterways lead to Lake Ontario, a source of drinking water for 9 million people. Containment and cleanup were the priority for crews acting on orders from Ontario’s Environment Ministry — and urgently. 

The process hadn’t gone perfectly by any stretch. But by Aug. 17, 2023, six days after the spill started, things were moving along. Vacuum trucks were out sucking up millions of litres of the goop. Crews had installed temporary dams and booms along Humber and Mimico creeks, which create a floating barrier and are often wrapped in absorbent material to soak up some of the oil as well.

Rain was forecast to fall overnight, a prospect that left some uneasy. One local called the Environment Ministry to say as much: “Caller stated she has lived beside Mimico Creek for years, and notes that when it’s raining, the water levels rise by a foot,” a ministry staffer wrote in an incident report obtained by The Narwhal through freedom of information legislation. 

“Caller stated she has seen the containment measures in place, and is concerned it won’t suffice ahead of tonight’s rain.”

But that evening, the Environment Ministry decided the spill was secure enough.

“The containment measures are sufficient in regards to the weather event,” the ministry noted.

They were wrong.

The contaminated goop that oozed down Mimico Creek last August was made of oil from the Brenntag facility that caught on fire, mixed in with firefighting foam and the huge amounts of water used to douse the flames. Photo: Cole Burston / The Canadian Press

Hours later, Mimico Creek began to rise. At one point, water volumes were five times more than what they had been the day before. Several of the booms — it’s unclear how many — blew out and were pushed aside. The slurry cascaded down Mimico Creek in the hours before dawn on Aug. 18, 2023, tumbling towards the waterfront, where it entered the lake at Humber Bay Park.

“Containment breached,” reads another entry in the incident report, dated Aug. 18, 2023, just before 4:30 a.m. “The material has reached Lake Ontario.”

Some four hours later, with some contaminated material still seeping into the lake, a contractor told the ministry the spill extended one kilometre out into water. Later, one of the ministry’s environmental officers reported seeing a brown plume at Humber Bay Park, where two human-made peninsulas frame the mouth of Mimico Creek. 

The contaminated material at the park was mixed into the water column, the officer noted, not just floating on the top. “Plume: scattered, emulsifying, winds increased,” an entry in the incident report from later in the day said, adding that crews were using shop vacuums to “capture blobs.” At some points in the day, ministry staff were worried the spill would reach the Toronto Islands to the east, though it doesn’t appear it ever did. 

Emulsified oil, or oil that has become mixed with water, is much more difficult to clean up. For one thing, it can linger for months or even years, according to the United States Environmental Protection Agency. Emulsified oil can also sink, disappearing from the surface of the water and giving the false impression that the environmental risk is gone. 

Key details about the extent of the leak — the brown plume, the emulsified oil, the distance the contamination travelled, the fears it would reach the islands — were never made public.

Instead, the day the spill poured into Lake Ontario, the Ministry of the Environment acknowledged a “light sheen” was visible at the mouth of Mimico Creek but made no mention of a brown plume. It did not say how far the material had moved, but told local journalists it was working to determine how much sludge may have ended up in the lake. Later, in a November 2023 report released to community groups that inquired about spill cleanup, the ministry acknowledged that a “sheen” had been observed on the lake, but maintained the “oil slurry” itself did not reach open water.

The Ministry of the Environment acknowledged but did not answer questions from The Narwhal about the apparent discrepancy between the incident report and what it told the public.

Rozhen Asrani, the president of the Mimico Residents Association, could see the spill from her balcony overlooking Mimico Creek and its mouth. She said the details in the incident report match what she and her neighbours in the community remember — an oil slick entering the lake, with a smell like burning plastic — but could never get officials to confirm. 

“A lot of what’s in the incident report, you could also just observe with the naked eye,” Asrani said. “And yet, when we reached out to the ministry and to our representatives, we never got clear answers.”

Ashley Wallis, an associate director at the charity Environmental Defence, which has pushed the province for transparency about the Mimico Creek spill, said the oily sheen was alarming on its own, indicating some kind of petrochemical pollution. But the details in the incident report about the plume also make it clear the ministry wasn’t honest about the extent of the problem, she added. 

“The government was gaslighting the public.” 

While swimming isn’t allowed at Humber Bay Park, where spilled oil on Mimico Creek flowed to Lake Ontario last summer, people do it anyway. On a recent visit, The Narwhal saw a few people dunking their heads in the water on the shoreline. Photos: Christopher Katsarov Luna / The Narwhal

In the early hours of the Brenntag spill, emergency responders were ‘up to their shins in contaminants’

On warm summer days, Humber Bay Park is full of people walking their dogs and eating ice cream by the shore as they take in views of Toronto’s skyline. Out on the water, others paddle and ride jet skis.

It’s about 12 kilometres from Brenntag’s north Etobicoke facility, where a fire broke out in the middle of the night on Aug. 11, 2023, driving the plume of petrochemicals down Mimico Creek to these waters. The cause of the fire is still unknown. But it escalated fast, spreading from tractor trailers to the back of the building.

Brenntag is a chemical distributor, and the building housed a variety of super flammable petrochemical products — motor oil, solvents, lubricants and more. At one point, 100 firefighters were at the scene, dousing the flames with massive amounts of water.

The Environment Ministry recorded its first notes about the fire just after 3 a.m. that night, when Toronto Fire Services called to say it was worried the runoff, all of that water mixed with various petrochemicals, could be a problem.

“Toronto Fire reports they are ‘up to their shins in contaminants,’ ” a subsequent entry in the incident report reads.

The toxic runoff from the fire included petroleum hydrocarbons — an umbrella term for a variety of substances made from fossil fuels, which can cause serious health problems like cancer and neurological issues. The slurry also contained some firefighting foam, which contains chemicals called per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, that come with a long list of potential health risks, like reproductive issues and cancer. Commonly known as “forever chemicals,” PFAS can linger in ecosystems for centuries. 

The spill on Mimico and Humber creeks last summer started at a Brenntag Canada facility. Eventually, some oil travelled downstream and entered Lake Ontario at Humber Bay Park. Map: Shawn Parkinson / The Narwhal

Under Ontario law, the responsibility for cleaning up hazardous spills is supposed to fall to the company that caused the contamination. In the wake of the fire, Brenntag hired contractors to contain and clean up the spill on its behalf, including waste management company GFL Environmental. Crews from GFL and Toronto Water — the City of Toronto department that oversees drinking water and sewers — were at work on the Brenntag spill within hours, racing to figure out where the sludge was going, and stop it.

The Ministry of the Environment is supposed to oversee that process and step in if companies don’t fulfill their obligations. Staff at its Spills Action Centre, a 24-7 hotline, pen an incident report when calls about a pollutant being released into the environment come in. Depending on the situation, staff also sometimes keep a log of the spill response and ensuing cleanup. It isn’t a complete list of everything that happens with a specific spill, but it does provide a snapshot.

The Brenntag spill was a challenge to tackle in the first place. The fire that started it was massive, and it took days for firefighters to extinguish hotspots and flare-ups in the smoldering wreckage. Each time they had to use more water, more contaminated runoff would flow downstream, a side effect that was unfortunate but unavoidable. The incident report mentions one flare-up happening as late as Aug. 19, 2023, eight days after the fire started.

It’s also a tricky landscape to work within, surrounded by urban development, ranging from industrial sites to quiet neighbourhoods.

As the sludge spread downstream in the hours after the fire started, it left a trail of death in its wake. The spill killed thousands of fish, 10 ducks, a mink and a beaver, according to the Toronto Wildlife Centre, and many more had to be rehabilitated.

At one point, a tipster called the ministry to report a “thick, coffee-coloured slick” at Tom Riley Park along Mimico Creek, measuring about 15 by six metres. (The caller, who was noted in the incident report as being a ministry employee, has the same name as a long-time ministry spokesperson.)

The Toronto Wildlife Centre was able to rehabilitate dozens of ducks it pulled from the contaminated waterway, scrubbing them with soap and feeding them activated charcoal to counteract the toxins. Even a tiny bit of oil on birds’ feathers can harm their ability to stay waterproof and warm. Photos: Cole Burston / The Canadian Press

Governments didn’t warn the public about the spill at Humber Bay Park

Before the spill overflowed into the lake, it oozed for kilometres along Humber and Mimico creeks, a path that took it through public parks and golf courses. As they went, the slicks attracted some media attention, and both provincial and municipal officials gave statements saying cleanup was in progress. But they didn’t issue warnings to tell people to stay away from the water.

While swimming isn’t allowed at Humber Bay Park, people do it anyway. On a recent visit, The Narwhal saw a few people dunking their heads in the water. There are also popular swimming spots to either side, at Sunnyside Beach and Marie Curtis Park. Sunnyside Beach had problematic levels of the bacteria E. coli the week of Aug. 18, 2023, and was marked unsafe for swimming until two days after the containment breach, according to public data posted by the City of Toronto. Marie Curtis Park’s beach was marked as safe.

Later, when the slurry made it to Lake Ontario, the Environment Ministry still did not issue any public warnings about the spill at Humber Bay Park, nor did it notify swimmers along any of Toronto’s western beaches. 

The ministry didn’t answer questions about why it didn’t tell the public about the spill impacting creeks and the lake. In its November 2023 report, however, it said the “oil slurry material” stayed contained within the Humber Bay Park area of Mimico Creek and was collected by Aug. 21, 2023.

“Ministry staff confirmed that although a sheen was visible by drone, the oil slurry had not reached the open water of Lake Ontario,” the report said. “Plume modelling undertaken by [Environment and Climate Change Canada] confirmed the drone observations.”

Environment and Climate Change Canada said its modelling indicated the spill likely wouldn’t impact the shoreline. Such modelling has “inherent uncertainties,” the department said in a statement, as they are “simplifications and approximations of reality” that can be flawed if the data used isn’t accurate.

Before the spill reached the lake, it travelled for kilometres past parks and golf courses along Mimico Creek and nearby Humber Creek. The situation attracted some media attention, but officials didn’t issue warnings to tell the public to steer clear of the contaminated areas. Photo: Christopher Katsarov Luna / The Narwhal

“Spill models have repeatedly proved to be a powerful tool for aiding response to environmental spill emergencies,” the statement said. 

“Under circumstances where the model outputs do not match the on-site observations, spill response decisions are made based upon the real-world observations and not the model outputs.”

For those on the ground, there seemed to be much more than a sheen on the water. “It was awful … it was a very thick layer of sludge, a couple inches of just solid sludge on top of the creek,” Asrani said. “Calling it a spill is an understatement, it was kind of like an environmental disaster.”

Still, Asrani said, governments didn’t publish basic information about the spill — why it was able to travel so far along Mimico Creek and into Lake Ontario, how the contaminants in the water might affect health and safety and what the long-term environmental impacts might be.

“It certainly is not good enough,” she said. “The public has a right to know what’s going on in their own backyard, in their own neighborhood.”

A lack of public information about hazardous spills is a common problem in Ontario, the province’s auditor general found in 2021. The Environment Ministry doesn’t publish timely information about the roughly 8,000 hazardous spills that happen in the province every year. The data it does eventually make public isn’t enough, the auditor general said, leaving out the specifics of where exactly spills happen, and what their impact on human health and the environment might be. A 2023 follow-up audit found the government had made little progress to fix those problems.

On summer days at Humber Bay Park, families take in the view from the shoreline while boaters and people on jet skis zip around Lake Ontario and the mouth of Mimico Creek. Governments didn’t issue public warnings the day oil from the Brenntag spill reached the park. Photo: Christopher Katsarov Luna / The Narwhal

In the absence of warnings from the province, the City of Toronto and Toronto Public Health didn’t issue any public warnings about the Mimico Creek spill either.

The City of Toronto did not answer questions about why it didn’t share more information with the public. Spokesperson Russell Baker said in a statement that the city cannot comment on “records held by or statements made by” the Environment Ministry and redirected questions to the province.

“The [ministry] led the response effort,” Russell said, adding that the city “worked closely” with other government agencies to respond to the spill.

Toronto Public Health spokesperson Chris Wai said the agency consulted with the Environment Ministry and “other stakeholders,” and found no need to issue public health warnings. “It was determined that there was no significant public health risk at any of the nearby beaches, and no risk to the city’s drinking water supply at any time,” Wai said in an email. 

In a statement, Brenntag spokesperson Robert Reitze said the company co-operated completely with authorities and created a hotline to answer community questions and concerns about the spill. The number was posted on signs in public places. 

Humber Bay Park is about 12 kilometres from Brenntag’s north Etobicoke facility, where a fire broke out in the middle of the night on Aug. 11, 2023, sending contaminated sludge downstream. Photo: Christopher Katsarov Luna / The Narwhal

The incident report indicates Brenntag put up the signs on Aug. 22, 2023, 11 days after the incident began and four days after the spill reached Lake Ontario. 

Someone should have done more, Wallis told The Narwhal.

“People have a right to know if there are potentially toxic or hazardous chemicals in the water body they’re maybe planning to swim in or canoe in,” Wallis said. She remembers visiting the area around the time of the spill and finding people playing with their pets, one dog splashing in the contaminated water.

“When I told them that there’d been a spill here, they were surprised. They didn’t know.”

The city councillor for the area, Amber Morley, told The Narwhal she plans to work with municipal staff to ensure the city learns from the Brenntag spill and is better prepared for future events.

‘Our residents deserve to have confidence that emergency procedures are being followed and appropriate safety measures are being put in place during incidents like this – and that when things don’t work as planned, we learn from it and update our procedures,” Morley said. 

“This is only possible with open and transparent communication.”

Contrasting information around the Brenntag spill was just one of the problems documented in the incident report.

In 2021, Ontario’s auditor general found the province doesn’t release enough information to the public about hazardous spills. The information it does release isn’t detailed enough and isn’t posted in a timely way, the auditor said. Photos: Christopher Katsarov Luna / The Narwhal

Ministry report indicates spill response marred with errors and delays

Problems arose on that first day of the cleanup, Aug. 11, 2023, when GFL staff failed to install booms and hay-bales along Humber Creek to soak up the oil, as the ministry had instructed them to do. “GFL admitted to forgetting and is currently arranging crews to attend,” the incident report reads. There were two other occasions where GFL didn’t keep up its commitments, according to the incident report.

GFL president Patrick Dolvigi, who is listed as the media contact on the company’s website, didn’t respond to detailed questions from The Narwhal about the incident report. 

Brenntag didn’t directly answer when asked if it was satisfied with GFL’s work on the spill, but in an email, Reitze said GFL’s crews worked around the clock in the wake of the incident.

“The cleanup work along the creeks and lakeshore was always responsive to changing conditions,” Reitze wrote.

The incident report obtained by The Narwhal also shows moments where government agencies were difficult to get ahold of or slow to act, hampering the response to the spill. 

Marie Curtis Park, at the mouth of Etobicoke Creek, is located just west of Humber Bay Park and has a public beach. Toronto Public Health and the Ontario Environment Ministry decided not to warn swimmers when oil breached into Lake Ontario, saying there was no risk to public health. Photo: Christopher Katsarov Luna / The Narwhal

Four days after the spill started, on Aug. 15, 2023, Toronto Water also failed to install dams, which the Environment Ministry had instructed it to do. That allowed contaminated material to keep gushing down Humber Creek, so the ministry asked GFL to take over the task. “It is evident that Toronto Water is failing to do the things they were directed to do,” the incident report said.

The City of Toronto didn’t answer questions about Toronto Water’s role in the response. 

Twice during the week of the spill, the ministry asked Toronto Police Services to help with traffic control around cleanup work. Once, the police declined, saying the service was too busy. The second time, police put the Spills Action Centre on hold — after 15 minutes, the ministry staffer who called hung up. 

Toronto police spokesperson Stephanie Sayer said the service received over 6,500 calls for help the day of the Spills Action Centre’s first call, making it busier than average.

“Although we strive to assist our partner agencies when requested, responding to urgent policing calls takes priority, and we are receiving and attending more emergency calls than ever before,” Sayer said. 

The Brenntag spill wasn’t the first to affect western Toronto waterways. Another spill, not involving Brenntag, happened on Mimico Creek in 2015. And earlier this year, an oily sludge of unknown origin spilled into Etobicoke Creek. Photos: Christopher Katsarov Luna / The Narwhal

Later, when oil was spilling into Lake Ontario, the Spills Action Centre tried calling Toronto Public Health to brief the agency four times — they were left on hold twice, left two voicemails and sent one email before getting a reply. All told, it took more than an hour. 

Wai said that falls within Toronto Public Health’s standard timeframe for a response, and there’s “no indication of a procedural lapse.” The ministry briefed Toronto Public Health — which had already been involved in discussions about the spill since Aug. 13 — about the breach as a “routine precaution,” and so the agency could be included in a meeting later that day, Wai said.

In the end, like the Environment Ministry, the health agency decided not to issue a public warning.

“Run-off material that had escaped containment on August 18 was monitored closely by drone and boats and contained/captured quickly,” Wai said. 

On Aug. 19, a Saturday morning, the Spills Action Centre had to get assistance from Toronto Parks and Recreation to block off parts of Humber Bay Park, where a farmers’ market and boat users were getting in the way of cleanup.

The City of Toronto didn’t answer questions about why the park wasn’t proactively closed off after the spill, but said questions should be directed to the Environment Ministry. 

Etobicoke Creek empties into Lake Ontario at Marie Curtis Park. Both Etobicoke Creek and Mimico Creek flow through industrial areas on their way south, and advocates say the municipal and provincial governments need to be better prepared for spills. Photo: Christopher Katsarov Luna / The Narwhal

Wallis said the response to the spill should have worked better. There are plenty of industrial sites within the Mimico Creek watershed, and accidents happen. 

“Even if nothing could have been done to prevent the spill from happening in the first place, I think that there should have been a much more agreed upon kind of response plan,” Wallis said.

The Brenntag spill wasn’t the first in the area — another spill not involving the company happened on Mimico Creek in 2015. And earlier this year, an oily sludge of unknown origin spilled into neighbouring Etobicoke Creek, prompting another large cleanup. 

The level of risk in the region, as developed as it is, means the province and municipalities need to have better plans for protecting waterways and for responding when spills happen, Asrani said.

“It’s just not good enough,” she said. “This cannot be our response, because it’s costing us when it comes to the health of our waterways.”

As of 2023, the Ontario government hadn’t made much progress to improve its transparency about hazardous spills, the province’s auditor general found. Photos: Christopher Katsarov Luna / The Narwhal

Mimico Creek looks better today, but restoration work will continue into 2025

Today, Humber Bay Park looks and smells clean on the surface. A pedestrian bridge stretches over the mouth of Mimico Creek — from it, herons can be seen fishing in the evening while ducks dabble nearby. 

Reitze told The Narwhal cleanup work wrapped up on Dec. 8, 2023, and that Brenntag has a restoration plan in place. That plan includes “surface-water sampling and the assessment of potential impact of the cleanup on vegetation, and analyses of aquatic life,” he said. It also includes field surveys in 2024 and monitoring through 2025, according to the ministry’s report from last November.

“Brenntag Canada is continuing to cooperate with the Ministry of the Environment, Conservation and Parks on this work,” Reitze added.

In its latest annual report, Brenntag said the fire at its Etobicoke facility cost the company 27.3 million euros (roughly $40.7 million), of which 8.2 million euros (about $12 million) was covered by insurance payouts. The company didn’t answer when asked how much of those costs were related to the environmental cleanup. 

A year after the Brenntag spill, Mimico Creek looks clean on the surface. Environmental monitoring is expected to continue through 2025. Photo: Christopher Katsarov Luna / The Narwhal

The Environment Ministry didn’t respond to questions from The Narwhal about the status of the cleanup. But in its public report about the spill from November 2023, the ministry said it planned to verify the effectiveness of the response through visual observations and environmental testing, among other things.

“If additional cleanup work is required, the ministry will ensure Brenntag begins it immediately,” the November 2023 report said. 

Wallis said the details in the incident report make her worry the spill will never truly be cleaned up. Oil mixed into the water column of the lake would be nearly impossible to remove, becoming diluted but still there.

“This evidence really, I think, questions the feasibility of whether a thorough cleanup was even possible,” she said of the incident report.

“I think our water bodies really deserve better.”

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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