Table of Contents

• Fast-tracking development: how Ontario is changing the rules for development through Bill 5
• Climate action is no longer at the centre of Ontario’s environmental agenda
• Drivers continue to see cost reductions in Ford’s Ontario
• Water protections and wetlands face new pressures in Ontario
• Why Ontario municipalities are losing environmental powers
• The next chapter in Ontario’s battle over conservation and protected lands
• Ontario is betting big on critical minerals and energy growth
• Carbon capture and storage is also on Ontario’s agenda
• Transparency and public oversight are disappearing

In the summer of 2025, wildfires burned nearly 600,000 hectares across Ontario — an area more than twice the size of Ottawa. Thousands of people were displaced. This summer’s wildfire evacuations have already begun in the northern part of the province, while intense heat waves blanket southern Ontario, with temperatures reaching above 40 C at times. 

These extreme weather events are made more likely because of human influence on the climate, according to federal scientists. Yet as Ontario faces the growing effects of climate change, the Doug Ford government appears to be largely moving away from mitigation and adaptation in its most recent term, focusing on economic growth over environmental safeguards.

The Ford government expanded parks, invested in electricity generation, funded Indigenous participation in mining reviews and created Ontario’s first standalone Ministry of Emergency Preparedness and Response. 

But many critics, and lawsuits, still make the case that the environment is being sidelined in a bid to build.

Most notable was a proposal buried within the province’s 2025 fall economic statement to eliminate legal requirements for Ontario to maintain a climate plan and publicly report on its progress. Across Queen’s Park, ministers were advancing changes affecting everything from environmental assessments to municipal green building standards to conservation authorities. 

These changes followed Premier Ford’s third consecutive majority victory on Feb. 27, 2025, after a snap winter election dominated by concerns about affordability, economic uncertainty and the threat of U.S. tariffs. 

Since returning to office, Ford’s government has increasingly argued Ontario must move faster, building more homes, approving more mines, generating more electricity and cutting what it sees as unnecessary barriers to economic growth.

More than a year after Ford’s re-election and Bill 5’s march through the legislature, the question is no longer whether the province’s environmental agenda is changing. It is what the changes will mean for the land, water and communities.

Fast-tracking development: how Ontario is changing the rules for development through Bill 5

When the Ford government introduced Bill 5 in April 2025, it pitched the legislation as a way to speed up development, cut red tape and strengthen Ontario’s economy. Called the Protect Ontario by Unleashing our Economy Act, Bill 5 received royal assent in June 2025.

Changes under the bill affect everything from who signs off on major developments to how a habitat is defined for endangered species and when the public gets a chance to weigh in.

At the centre of that shift is a belief repeatedly expressed by the government: Ontario’s approval system takes too long.

The legislation created a new system, called One Project, One Process, designed to move projects through approvals faster. It gave cabinet new powers to designate special economic zones, where certain provincial and municipal rules won’t apply to projects deemed strategically important to Ontario’s economy.

Under the One Project, One Process framework, the Ministry of Energy and Mines became the central coordinator for designated mining projects. The province says the approach will cut review timelines in half by creating a single approval pathway and reducing duplication between ministries.

Several mining projects have already been designated under the system, including the Crawford Nickel project near Timmins and Frontier Lithium’s project near Red Lake.

For some First Nations leaders, however, the question is whether consultation can keep pace with faster approvals.

The Chiefs of Ontario has warned that speeding up development should not come at the expense of Treaty Rights and consent processes. Similar concerns have surfaced around the government’s special economic zone framework.

The Ford government’s 2025 budget included a commitment of $70 million over four years for an Indigenous Participation Fund, intended to help communities and organizations in areas of significant mineral development engage in regulatory processes related to mineral exploration and mine development.

But the debate has already moved into the courts.

Environmental groups have launched a constitutional challenge against Ontario’s Special Economic Zones Act, arguing the legislation is undemocratic, putting unchecked power in the hands of the cabinet. Several First Nations have also joined legal efforts challenging the law, arguing it threatens Indigenous Rights and weakens environmental protections.

There is no hearing scheduled yet but the law firm representing the case, Woodward & Company LLP, told The Narwhal it hopes for one to be scheduled in early 2027. 

One of the most consequential changes under Bill 5 involved Ontario’s approach to protecting species at risk.

For nearly two decades, the Endangered Species Act governed how threatened and endangered plants and animals were protected in the province. That changed with Bill 5, which proposed repealing and replacing the Endangered Species Act with the Species Conservation Act, a shift that happened on March 30, 2026, marking the most significant overhaul of Ontario’s species-at-risk framework in nearly two decades.

The new legislation narrows how a habitat is defined. Previously, habitat included the broader areas species relied on for feeding, migration and mating, among other things. The new definition focuses primarily on occupied dens, nests and similar dwelling places for animals, and immediately surroundings trees and plants. 

The government says the changes will create a more efficient and predictable system for project proponents, while continuing to protect species. But the narrower definition could leave important parts of ecosystems without protection, particularly for wide-ranging species-at-risk such as woodland caribou that depend on large connected landscapes to survive.

Climate action is no longer at the centre of Ontario’s environmental agenda

Climate policy has not disappeared altogether, but several decisions made since the Ford government’s re-election suggest it is not a driving force behind many of the province’s major policy choices.

One of the clearest examples arrived with the province’s 2025 fall economic statement.

Buried within the omnibus budget bill was a proposal to repeal portions of Ontario’s Cap and Trade Cancellation Act, legislation introduced by the Ford government in 2018 to eliminate the provincial carbon pricing system. The act had required the government to prepare a climate plan and publicly report on its progress — a law that, by the beginning of Ford’s third term, was one of the province’s few remaining climate accountability mechanisms.

The repeal came as Ontario and the rest of Canada continue to experience increasingly severe weather linked to climate change, including longer wildfire seasons, extreme heat and flooding. It also arrived at a time when national emissions reductions have largely stalled.

In its independent assessment released last year, the Canadian Climate Institute warned that Canada’s 2030 emissions-reduction target is now out of reach. While emissions have fallen since 2005, progress has slowed significantly in recent years. 

Ontario’s decision to repeal climate accountability legislation was part of a weakening of climate policies across the country, the institute noted, which is one factor making national targets more difficult to meet.

Ontario did elevate climate risk to cabinet level following the 2025 election, by creating a standalone Ministry of Emergency Preparedness and Response. It comes as Ontario experiences increasingly severe wildfire seasons linked to hotter and drier conditions. Last year, 643 fires burned nearly 600,000 hectares across the province, prompting evacuations in several northern and First Nations communities. 

It’s a necessary step, but questions remain about whether funding is keeping pace with growing climate risks. In March 2026, the government projected 2025 costs for the ministry to be $292 million, including emergency evacuations of Indigenous communities on behalf of Indigenous Services Canada. But the ministry’s operating budget was projected to rise to just $66.8 million in 2026, up $3.7 million from the previous year.

The Narwhal reached out to the Ministry of Emergency Preparedness and Response, but did not receive a response before publication.

Drivers continue to see cost reductions in Ford’s Ontario

Throughout his time in government, Ford’s Conservatives have regularly worked to reduce costs for motorists, including for fossil fuels like gasoline that emit heat-trapping gasses into the atmosphere. Transportation is the largest contributor to the province’s overall emissions.

The 2025 provincial budget permanently cut Ontario’s gasoline and diesel taxes to nine cents per litre, a move the government said would save households an average of $115 annually. The move made permanent gas tax cuts first introduced in 2022, which were extended four times. The province also permanently removed tolls on the publicly owned portion of Highway 407 East and introduced legislation preventing municipalities from implementing programs that disincentivize driving, such as road tolls or congestion pricing.

Ford’s Progressive Conservatives have consistently framed the measures as affordability initiatives, arguing they put money back into drivers’ pockets at a time of economic uncertainty. 

All of this came after a previous term punctuated with battles over bike lanes.

Water protections and wetlands face new pressures in Ontario

Twenty-five years after a fatal tragedy in Walkerton, Ont., transformed how the province protects drinking water, the Ford government is once again rewriting some of the rules governing water oversight.

One of the most significant changes came through Bill 56, the Building a More Competitive Economy Act, which received royal assent in November 2025.

Among its many provisions are amendments to Ontario’s Clean Water Act, legislation introduced in response to the 2000 Walkerton tragedy, when E. coli contamination in a municipal water supply killed seven people and sickened more than 2,300 others. The public inquiry that followed led to a layered approach to drinking water protection, including locally developed source protection plans designed to identify and manage risks before they could affect municipal water supplies.

In amending the act, the Ford government said lengthy approval processes and overlapping consultations on development projects had become cumbersome.

Under the new framework, the province standardized some drinking water protection policies and introduced changes intended to speed up plan amendments to allow for development. Government documents say the reforms could shorten approval timelines by as much as six months while providing greater certainty for municipalities, regulators and project proponents. The province has also argued the changes would maintain key protections while making the system more efficient.

But some observers see the reforms differently.

Ontario Green Party Leader Mike Schreiner has argued the changes transfer authority away from independent experts and local source protection committees. Currently, there are 19 committees — made up of conservation authorities, municipal representatives, agricultural interests and community members — that oversee 38 drinking water protection plans across the province. Schreiner told The Narwhal the local knowledge embedded in those plans was one of the central lessons of Walkerton and worried greater ministerial control could weaken that approach.

The debate over water governance extends beyond drinking water protection.

Another source of controversy has been the Water and Wastewater Public Corporations Act, first introduced in late 2025.

The legislation would allow the province to restructure municipal water and wastewater services through newly created public corporations. The government has said the changes are intended to modernize service delivery and improve efficiency.

But the proposal has sparked concerns among environmental organizations, labour groups and some academics, who argue it could open the door to greater private-sector involvement in public water systems. 

Some critics, like advocacy group Environmental Defence, have pointed to provisions that would allow water and wastewater services to be moved out of direct municipal control and governed through corporate structures, raising questions about accountability, transparency and public oversight.

The Ford government has rejected suggestions it intends to privatize water systems. After pushback, it introduced amendments to the act limiting ownership of the corporations to governments and government agencies. It says there are no plans to privatize water systems and emphasized that ownership of the proposed corporations would remain in public hands.

For many critics, the debate is informed by Ontario’s own history.

In 1994, the City of Hamilton transferred operation of its water and wastewater system to a private company as part of an effort to create what city leaders hoped would become a model for private water management. 

Just over a year after the deal was signed, roughly 180 million litres of untreated sewage spilled into Hamilton Harbour and Lake Ontario. More than 100 homes and businesses were flooded. In the years that followed, experts pointed to staffing cuts, cost overruns and repeated changes in ownership as evidence that private management, with its focus on profit over service, had failed to deliver on its promises.

Why Ontario municipalities are losing environmental powers

For years, Ontario municipalities have tested environmental policies that go beyond provincial requirements. Cities encouraged electric vehicle infrastructure, required tree planting and experimented with ways to reduce emissions from new development, including through green building standards. 

In Toronto, green roofs became mandatory on many new buildings. Other municipalities began developing their own climate-focused standards as they prepared for rapid population growth.

Over the past year, however, the Ford government has increasingly moved to limit how far municipalities can go.

One of the first major changes came through Bill 17, the Protect Ontario by Building Faster and Smarter Act, which received royal assent in June 2025, days after the Ford government was re-elected.

The legislation targeted municipal green building standards that exceed the Ontario Building Code. In Toronto, that raised questions about the future of the Toronto Green Standard, a framework that has shaped development in Canada’s largest city for more than 15 years.

The standard required developers to incorporate features to reduce emissions and improve resilience to climate change. It included requirements for bicycle parking and electric vehicle charging stations in new buildings over four storeys. Developers also had to take steps to mitigate flooding and extreme heat, for instance, by building rooftop gardens and planting trees. 

There are also financial incentives to take on even more ambitious climate-friendly features. 

The province concluded Toronto’s mandatory requirements could exceed what municipalities are permitted to require under its new law. It also argued that creating a consistent set of provincial rules will help accelerate housing development and increase housing supply. 

The Toronto Environmental Alliance, a not-for-profit advocacy organization, countered that municipalities are often better positioned to understand local environmental challenges and should retain the flexibility to address them.

That debate intensified in 2026 with Bill 98, the Building Homes and Improving Transportation Infrastructure Act.

The legislation prevented municipalities from requiring a range of environmental features in new developments, including electric vehicle parking infrastructure, bird-friendly design standards and tree planting on residential properties. Provincial analysis of the legislation acknowledged the possibility of “unintended environmental impacts” and noted that the changes could shift sustainability-related costs from developers to municipalities.

The implications extend well beyond Toronto.

Municipalities including Hamilton, Ottawa, Waterloo Region, Oshawa, Clarington and Guelph have either implemented or begun developing their own green building standards. In Durham Region, local governments have been working toward a goal of net-zero emissions for new housing by 2030. Ottawa officials have warned the legislation could prevent them from requiring electric vehicle infrastructure in developments, even where local planning work has already been completed.

Some municipal officials worry the changes could create new costs in the future.

Buildings account for roughly one-quarter of Ontario’s greenhouse gas emissions, largely because of fossil fuels used for heating. If new developments are built to lower environmental standards today, municipalities may ultimately face higher costs retrofitting those buildings in the decades ahead.

The next chapter in Ontario’s battle over conservation and protected lands

Over the past year, the Ford government has expanded park access, announced new protected lands and invested millions in outdoor recreation. In May 2026, Ontario announced plans to expand Uxbridge Urban Provincial Park by 23 acres, adding ecologically significant lands within the Oak Ridges Moraine. The government has also committed nearly $60 million toward what it describes as the largest expansion of Ontario Parks campgrounds in more than 50 years, including dozens of new campsites at MacGregor Point, Killarney and Driftwood provincial parks.

But the Ford government has also moved ahead with major development projects that cut through environmentally sensitive areas and launched the most significant restructuring of Ontario’s conservation authorities in their 80-year history.

Perhaps no project better illustrates that tension than Highway 413.

A cornerstone of Doug Ford’s re-election campaigns, the proposed highway would connect York, Peel and Halton regions and, according to the province, reduce travel times — by 30 minutes for those driving the entire stretch.

Critics have long argued the slight time savings come at a significant environmental cost.

Environmental assessments have identified impacts on Greenbelt lands, prime farmland, waterways and habitat used by species at risk, while environmental groups argue mitigation measures remain insufficient for several threatened species.

In August 2025, Ontario awarded its first construction contracts for the project, marking the beginning of a development the government says would contribute more than $1 billion annually to the provincial economy.

In Wasaga Beach, the province has removed roughly 60 hectares of Wasaga Beach Provincial Park, handing the land over to the municipality, which is making an effort to redevelop the waterfront and boost tourism. The government says the project would improve public access and support economic activity while maintaining public use of the beach.

Conservation groups and local residents have questioned whether lifting these protections sets a precedent for future development on provincially protected lands. Some have also raised concerns about piping plovers, as Wasaga Beach is one of the most important nesting sites for the endangered bird.

Similar concerns surfaced in Port Hope.

In 2025, the Ministry of Natural Resources altered the boundary of the Garden Hill Area of Natural and Scientific Interest, a designation that recognizes the unique qualities of an area, removing land that had previously been protected. The boundary change meant a planned subdivision could move ahead.

The biggest change, however, may be taking place behind the scenes.

In 2026, the Ford government formally launched plans to consolidate Ontario’s 36 conservation authorities into nine larger organizations overseen by a new provincial agency. Conservation authorities were created over 50 years ago in response to flooding disasters and the environmental impacts of a growing population.

Officials say consolidation would improve efficiency and ensure resources are distributed more evenly across the province. 

Jonathan Scott, a councillor for the town of Bradford West Gwillimbury and chair of the Nottawasaga Valley Conservation Authority board, previously told The Narwhal the local environmental expertise in each individual authority is essential. “Merger of that scale could create a larger, more distant bureaucracy that is less responsive to local municipalities, developers and farmers,” he said about the move to consolidate. 

The province has already directed conservation authorities to pause major staffing, land acquisition and governance decisions while the transition unfolds. The restrictions are expected to remain in place until at least early 2027.

Ontario is betting big on critical minerals and energy growth

If the Ford government’s environmental agenda has one clear area of investment, it is energy and resource development.

In December 2025, the province officially launched its $500-million Critical Minerals Processing Fund. The fund is designed to help expand mineral processing capacity in Ontario, so that what’s mined here is also refined and processed within the province, rather than shipped elsewhere.

The government has described critical minerals as essential to Ontario’s economic future, pointing to growing demand from electric vehicle manufacturing, battery production, aerospace and defence.

At the same time, Ontario is preparing for a dramatic increase in electricity demand.

The province estimates electricity consumption could rise by as much as 90 per cent by 2050 as new homes, manufacturing facilities, electric vehicles and data centres place greater pressure on the grid. In response, the government has launched some of the largest electricity procurements in Ontario’s history.

Over the past year, the Independent Electricity System Operator, the Crown agency charged with balancing supply on the grid, has approved more than a dozen new energy projects, securing massive amounts of additional supply and storage capacity. The province says the projects would provide enough electricity to power hundreds of thousands of homes while helping maintain reliability as demand grows. Many of the projects also include First Nations partners that hold more than 50 per cent ownership stakes.

The government continues to pursue new nuclear generation, including small modular reactors and potential large-scale nuclear generation facilities. In April, the operator awarded contracts to a dozen wind and solar power generating projects, a major departure from the Ford government’s 2018 move to cancel a slew of renewables projects.

At the same time, officials have repeatedly emphasized the role natural gas will continue to play in maintaining reliability and cost efficiency as electricity demand increases.

Carbon capture and storage is also on Ontario’s agenda

The government has opened the door to commercial-scale carbon storage through Bill 27, legislation that allows companies to pursue projects that capture carbon dioxide emissions from industrial facilities and store them underground. The Ford government argues the technology could help reduce emissions from sectors such as cement manufacturing, steel production and power generation. 

But critics argue carbon storage allows for the continued burning of fossil fuels, rather than transitioning away from them. 

There are other pressing concerns — carbon storage is proposed for southwestern Ontario, where there are an unknown number of old gas wells that Ontario can’t afford to properly plug. As The Narwhal reporter in September, some worry carbon storage could heighten the risk of leaks from these wells of poisonous hydrogen sulfide and planet-warming methane.

In June 2026, the province announced additional funding to help municipalities address abandoned oil and gas wells scattered across southwestern Ontario. 

Transparency and public oversight are disappearing

Alongside environmental changes at Queen’s Park, another debate has emerged — one focused not on what decisions are being made, but how they are being made, who gets to know about it and who gets a say.

In 2025, the Ford government exempted aspects of the redevelopment of Ontario Place from consultation requirements under Ontario’s Environmental Bill of Rights, a move that reduced opportunities for public input on one of the province’s most controversial redevelopment projects. Similarly, the Species Conservation Act eliminated the requirement that property owners, developers or industry whose actions could harm threatened species make a posting on the public environmental registry, as was previously required under the Environmental Bill of Rights.

The most recent flashpoint came in April 2026, when the province passed Bill 97.

Among its many provisions were significant changes to Ontario’s freedom of information laws. Now, records held by cabinet ministers, parliamentary assistants and the premier’s office are exempt from public access requests. The changes were made retroactively, applying to records dating back decades.

The Canadian Association of Journalists and Canadian Journalists for Free Expression warned the amendments could significantly reduce the public’s ability to understand how government decisions are made. They argued the changes would shield records such as emails, phone logs and other communications that have historically been used to uncover information about government decision-making and public spending.

For environmental reporting, freedom of information requests have often provided a rare window into internal government discussions.

The Narwhal’s investigations into the Greenbelt scandal and Ontario’s relationship with Enbridge Gas relied, at least in part, on records obtained through freedom of information laws. 

As opportunities for public participation and access to government decisions degrade, it limits who gets a hand in shaping the future of Ontario’s environment and the people who depend on it.

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

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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. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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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?

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.

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. 

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. 

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.

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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. 

“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. 

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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.

Want to make sure you don’t miss our latest work? Subscribe to our channel on YouTube and follow us on TikTok. 

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.

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. 

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.

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.”  

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. 

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. 

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. 

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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.

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.

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.

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.

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. 

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.

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 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.” 

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.”

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.

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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.

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.” 

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. 

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.)

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.

“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.

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. 

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.

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. 

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. 

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. 

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.”

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. 

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.