Summary

• Urban forests cool city streets, sequester and store carbon and absorb stormwater runoff, among other benefits.
• But city trees face compounding stressors, from disease and pests to heat waves and droughts, which makes looking after them an intensive process.
• In Winnipeg, the municipal government has increased its efforts to nurture the urban forest, with a goal of growing canopy coverage to 24 per cent by 2065.

Only a handful of years ago, the outlook for Winnipeg’s iconic urban forest was grim. 

The ash and elm-dominated canopy, best known for its elegant boulevard archways, had fallen into the clutches of Dutch elm disease and a scourge of emerald ash borer beetles. The city was losing public trees far faster than they could be replaced, planting just one tree for every three removed, according to the city’s 2021 “State of the Urban Forest” report.

But the introduction of Winnipeg’s urban forest strategy in 2023 changed the trajectory. 

The comprehensive planning document laid out a 20-year path to restore forest health, grow the city’s picturesque tree canopy and minimize the risks to tree assets.  

In response, the city hired more forestry staff and increased the department’s spending from approximately $11 million (where it had hovered since 2016) to an average of more than $17 million between 2023 and 2025, according to a review of city budgets.

Results followed: Winnipeg had planted an average 2,500 public trees each year between 2018 and 2022. In the years since the urban forest strategy was finalized, it has planted more than 6,000 per year.

Since 2023, the city has replaced felled trees on public lands at about a one-to-one pace (though this does not account for trees on private property or in natural areas such as the Assiniboine forest or the city’s riverbanks). 

But planting alone does not guarantee Winnipeg will make progress toward the urban forest strategy’s ultimate goal: to grow the city’s tree canopy cover from 17 to 24 per cent by 2065. 

Young trees must survive heat waves, droughts, severe storms, pests and disease to reach maturity and deliver the full benefits of the urban canopy. 

How a municipality cares for its trees — especially under increasing climate pressures — is just as critical to forest health as planting.

Planting a tree is just the first step. Then comes the weekly watering and the hand-weeding

According to Dave Domke, Winnipeg’s manager of parks and open space, the city’s trees are managed by a mosaic of forest stewards. Trees in new neighbourhoods are planted and maintained by developers, while the city’s urban forestry crews are responsible for replacing felled trees on boulevards or in parks. 

Community groups, neighbourhood associations and volunteers also plant and care for smaller trees in natural areas. Typically, these trees are planted as seedlings.

Domke calls the bigger trees the city looks after “large, ornamental trees.” These trees leave the nurseries when they are between seven and 10 years old and their trunks have grown to a 60-millimetre diameter.

“They need to be a substantial size in order to withstand our snow,” Domke said in an interview. “It also gives a nice aesthetic and it’s quite a nice size to grow on into the future.” 

After planting, volunteer groups, developers and city staff are then responsible for two years of dedicated tree maintenance called the “establishment period.”

“When you remove a tree from the nursery, you’re leaving about 80 per cent of the roots in the ground. You’re trying to get the trees re-established as quickly as you can,” Domke said.

During this time, trees are watered, weeded, mulched and protected according to a detailed list laid out in the city’s tree-planting and maintenance specification. 

Crews are expected to water trees immediately upon planting, then every one to two weeks throughout the summer. Trees should be hand-weeded during this time, the specifications say, and supported with protection collars and stakes.

Domke said the city’s maintenance work has been successful. Newly planted trees on boulevards and in parks survive about 90 per cent of the time, he said, about on par with the city’s expectations. 

Smaller trees in natural areas have a much lower survival rate, between 50 and 80 per cent, because they face more environmental challenges, he noted. The city compensates for the higher mortality rate by over-planting trees in these areas.

“We’re dealing with living things here, and you’re not going to be 100 per cent successful,” he said.

A healthy urban tree cools city streets and sequesters carbon — and costs at least $1,000

Healthy and mature trees provide a variety of environmental, health and affordability benefits to communities. 

A robust tree canopy provides shade, which can cool city streets, reduce the risk of heat-related illness and reduce air conditioner use by up to 30 per cent, according to the urban forest strategy. Winnipeg’s forest also stores an estimated 500,000 tonnes of carbon and sequesters nearly 40,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide each year — roughly double the city’s annual emissions from building electricity. At the same time, the city’s trees scrub pollutants from the air and produce approximately 15,000 tonnes of oxygen annually. Trees also absorb stormwater runoff, reducing strain on sewer systems.

But these benefits don’t come without maintenance, according to the Green Municipal Fund, an endowment group that supports Canadian municipalities investing in sustainability projects, including urban forestry initiatives. 

“Trees should be considered valuable natural assets, and like all assets they require maintenance,” communications director Julie Smithers said in an email.

But unlike traditional, grey infrastructure, which has a peak value when it’s first installed and deteriorates over its lifetime, trees are least valuable when first planted, but mature into their peak value over a period of several decades. 

“Given that the benefits of trees grow with time, maximizing their health and life expectancy is essential,” Winnipeg’s urban forest strategy says. “Tree assets cost the most at the beginning and end of their life cycles (planting and removal), so extending their time in healthy maturity ensures the urban forest maximizes the return on investment in tree planting and maintenance.”

The strategy gives the example of a single linden tree planted on a Winnipeg street: the city pays for its planting and annual maintenance until its removal. If it lives a long life, the strategy says, it will produce enough benefits — including carbon storage, avoided runoff, energy savings and pollution scrubbing — to give the city a positive return on its investment. 

But if it dies before maturity and must be repeatedly replaced, that single linden tree can cost the city a net loss of $18,000 over 100 years. That figure doesn’t account for the lost opportunity costs of having a healthy, mature tree over the same time period.

Climate change makes maintenance more challenging. More frequent storms mean more pruning is necessary, and more frequent droughts and heat waves necessitate more watering — especially for young, vulnerable trees. 

While the city does not have exact figures outlining the cost to maintain a tree throughout its lifetime, Domke said the average public tree costs roughly $1,000 to plant and care for through the establishment period.

Winnipeg’s public tree inventory valued at up to $740 million

Winnipeg has used that $1,000 figure, called the replacement cost, as a baseline to define the value of its trees. The city’s 2018 asset management plan valued the public tree inventory at just $226 million, based on a replacement cost of $740 at the time.

“This replacement valuation did not account for the fact trees grow and their value increases with size, age and health,” the urban forest strategy noted. 

“Valuing trees based on their size and condition would provide a better indication of the true cost of replacing Winnipeg’s tree assets, and the cost avoided by investing in maintenance to maximize their safe useful life expectancy.”

The forestry strategy recommended valuing trees according to a diameter-based replacement system, which it already employed for trees removed for construction. Small trees, with diameters of less than 10 centimetres, are valued at $1,000, while larger trees must be appraised according to a standardized formula.

According to the strategy, this approach pegs the value of the city’s tree inventory between $683 million and $740 million — more than double the asset management plan’s previous assessment.

Cities across Canada are employing tree appraisals and other natural asset valuation systems to better account for the benefits of urban forests, according to Tree Canada, a national rural and urban forestry non-profit. 

Using remote sensing and mapping technologies, as well as on-the-ground sampling, cities are better able to quantify the ecological and economic benefits of the forest canopy, Tree Canada notes in its urban forestry guide. 

These valuations make it easier for municipalities to measure the return on investment in tree maintenance.

In 2014, TD Economics estimated the ecological and economic value of forests in Toronto, Vancouver, Halifax and Montreal, and found every dollar invested in maintenance generated between $1.88 and $12.70 in benefits. 

A similar valuation strategy is on the horizon in Winnipeg, Domke said. The city is planning a flyover to analyze the tree canopy cover and support a more robust quantification of the forest’s value. 

“We all know they look good and are beautiful, but how much carbon sequestration are they undertaking? How much of the stormwater sewer management do they contribute to? What oxygen production is coming out?” Domke said. 

“These are the kinds of things that other cities have started to quantify, and Winnipeg is now on the road to doing that.”

Julia-Simone Rutgers is a reporter covering environmental issues in Manitoba. Her position is part of a partnership between The Narwhal and the Winnipeg Free Press.

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Summary

• The Squamish Nation has regained some its land back after a lengthy court case against the federal government. Sen̓áḵw is the ancestral village name, and name of the development.
• It’s the largest sustainable housing project in First Nations history, and among one of Canada’s largest developments that will operate at net-zero emissions.
• A blessing ceremony for Squamish members and invited guests was hosted at the first completed tower on May 8, the second ceremony of its kind held in the ancestral village in over 100 years.

On an overcast day in May, hundreds of people are gathered in Sen̓áḵw, an ancestral Squamish village, to celebrate the first completed tower among what will be one of the largest housing developments in Kitsilano’s history.

The first tower, called tl’eltl’élnup (real home) is ceremonially brushed with cedar as guests — many of them Squamish Nation members — look on with pride.

With Squamish songs and drummers, eagles flying overhead and people of all ages in attendance – the blessing ceremony carried laughter and emotion throughout. 

“Very historic day for our Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw people, we’re breathing life back into our village here in Sen̓áḵw,” Wilson Williams said.

Williams is the Council Chairperson for the Squamish Nation, and said that after being removed from the ancestral village for more than 100 years, the blessing ceremonies are “the beginning of something beautiful.”

Sen̓áḵw has made headlines across the country as one of the greenest urban developments in Canada, and receiving the largest investment from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation in history. 

In the midst of Canada’s housing crisis, Sen̓áḵw is set to provide 6,000 homes. And in one of the most desirable neighbourhoods in one of North America’s most expensive cities, 1,200 will be delivered under an affordable model.

None of it would have been possible without fighting in court for 25 years. The village site was won back in a 2003 court case — a victory won by Elders from the nation, and renowned leaders such as Chief Joe Mathias. 

“In 1913 our people got put on a barge and pushed into the ocean, our homes were burned as they were going off into the ocean. So it’s been a long battle,” Jacob Lewis said, seated on a cedar bench in the shape of a canoe.

Lewis is Squamish and has been involved with the Sen̓áḵw development since its inception in 2019, when the nation voted in favour to build. He is currently the director of community development with Nch’ḵay̓ Development Corporation, a partner in the project.

“Super excited today, it’s been a long time coming,” he said. “There’s been so much pride, so much honour, so much appreciation and gratitude for our ancestors, for our past leadership and all those people that helped get us here today for the blessing ceremony.”

Beyond making history with the development size and investment, what makes the development special to many is the beauty of the architecture, emphasis on Squamish artwork and environmental considerations taken in the build. 

Three towers come into view from the Burrard Street Bridge, trigon and crescent shapes decorating the buildings.

Coast Salish designs are visible in the concrete, with Sḵwx̱wú7mesh language set to be visible throughout the properties upon completion – there is no mistaking that this is a Squamish village.

The tower is the first of 11 residential towers, with rental priority going to Squamish people, and then Indigenous people, before rentals open to the general public – implemented through an Indigenous participation plan.

The development will be surrounded by a village with amenities including a pool, sauna, cold plunge and more. 

Sen̓áḵw development centres environmental considerations

While the physical construction of Sen̓áḵw is releasing carbon into the environment, the operation of the buildings will emit almost no greenhouse gases from the day residents move in, Jennifer Podmore Russell told the Narwhal. 

“It was really important that we bring every environmental standard that we could into this building, as quickly as we could,” she said. Russell is the Chief Development Officer with Nch’ḵay̓ Development Corporation.

Through an investment from Creative Energy, a Vancouver-based green energy supplier, Sen̓áḵw is one of the only housing developments of its size that will operate at net-zero emissions in the world.

Residential towers are designed to be heated and cooled by converted wasted thermal energy, captured from a Metro Vancouver waste line. 

“With a capacity of approximately 4,000 tons, it’s one of the largest cooling towers in the Lower Mainland, efficiently serving the entire Sen̓áḵw development,” the Creative Energy website reads. 

Just two levels of parking are being offered across each tower, reducing carbon emissions and encouraging less vehicle use. 

A number of different partnerships with transportation providers in the area have been established, including Uber, Evo car share, Mobi rental bikes and False Creek Ferries, so that residents can “be able to navigate their life without the burden of a car,” Russell said.

‘I am excited to live in a brand-new building’

The first residents will move into Sen̓áḵw on June 1st, with the next tower set to open in September. It’s a move that some residents have long awaited, including Cody Bugler.

“I’m moving into a one-bedroom suite, 585 sq. feet, market rate. The size and price is comparable to what I’m paying now in a much older building in the West End, with much less exciting amenities.”

Bugler is Plains Cree from Red Pheasant First Nation in Saskatchewan, and has lived in the area for years. He uses public transportation to access his job at the University of British Columbia as an Indigenous Engagement Leader. 

“I’ve been putting off moving for some time, waiting for these buildings to be complete, so it’s exciting to finally see it all come to fruition,” he said. 

Reflecting on the country’s housing shortage, Lewis said that “it feels amazing” being able to host Indigenous people who find themselves living in Vancouver.

As for building at this scale, Squamish cultural values helped guide the process. Providing high-density housing is solving one of the city’s largest problems, welcomes members of the nation back to the territory, while ensuring that environmental impact is as minimal as possible.

“People were saying ‘shouldn’t they be building something that’s more sustainable?’ Expecting us to build longhouses,” Lewis said, addressing negative feedback from the surrounding neighbourhood.

“We’re doing it the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh way, and that’s what we’re gonna focus on,” he said.

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Michael Geselbracht was out for a Saturday run in Nanaimo, B.C., when he came across soil piled up in a special area he knew was part of a native Garry oak ecosystem. 

That particular spot — across from a row of houses on View Street, parallel to a railway — had been an improbably dense and thriving meadow of a native plant called slimleaf onion. The patch was something of a terrestrial island, approximately 50 square metres surrounded by introduced grasses and weeds. Still, the onions persisted. They had given an especially impressive show of white and the rarer pink flowers in the last wet spring. 

But in October 2025, thousands of nickel-sized bulbs were turned up by heavy machines and strewn like pebbles across the soil’s surface when the meadow became a construction site. The transformation was part of an effort to develop a multi-use trail corridor along the railway route by a group called the Island Corridor Foundation — a trail that, unbeknownst even to many local conservationists, routed through the rare patch of slimleaf onions.

Slimleaf onion is a blue-listed species in B.C., designated of “special concern, vulnerable to extirpation or extinction.” But it’s also just one of more than 100 plants and animals on the province’s species-at-risk list in the critically endangered Garry oak ecosystem it belongs to.

The biodiverse and fire-adapted Garry oak ecosystem has been tended by Indigenous Peoples for thousands of years. But after 150 years of settlement, less than five per cent of the Garry oak ecosystem remains in a near-natural state. Some also hang on in remnants like the one on View Street, adulterated by invasive plants, mostly forgotten, hard to spot out of season, disconnected from other Garry oak plant communities and, more often than not, totally legal to destroy.

‘No Garry oak ecosystem that has been unimpacted’

Geselbracht spends most days outside teaching kids to love the natural world in the Nanaimo Forest School. He’s helped restore the local Cat Stream for salmon, and has spent more than 70 hours pulling invasive plants like trailing blackberry and English ivy from his neighbourhood.  

Like many Nanaimo residents, he was thrilled with the prospect of more trails — for cycling and for access to more community projects, like the food forest he helped clear from a weedy abandoned lot. It all seemed worth a bit of mud and machines. 

“It’s the connectivity, you know — the more that we have these connected trails, the more people start to use them,” Geselbracht says. 

But he hadn’t expected the route to go through the native plants; he knew something should be done. So he spread the word and texted pictures of the bulldozed area to others in Nanaimo. Some people salvaged bulbs — a pair of cupped hands can hold more than 50. A biologist living in the neighbourhood stopped by with specific suggestions to prevent further harm. The Nanaimo Area Land Trust sent a letter to the city, imploring them to mitigate the damage. “Even when there’s this tiny remnant, you just feel the loss of it, in terms of death by a thousand cuts,” Linda Brooymans, stewardship manager for the land trust, told The Narwhal.

Since the City and the Island Corridor Foundation were alerted to the presence of the onion, workers have put in small culverts to direct water to the remaining bulbs — the plants rely on seasonal wetlands called vernal pools. They also replaced the soil, laid straw in an effort to protect the site and built a fence to protect the area from foot traffic. By January some of the bulbs were sprouting.

But native plant advocate Hunter Jarratt says the fence caused further disruption and, positioned at the back of the patch, won’t do anything to keep people from walking on the plants. Jarratt knew that spot for the rare slimleaf onion and was shocked to find it scraped to bedrock.

Only the spring will tell if the ground will hold water like it did before, how many of the plants will survive and whether the straw or site disturbance will result in a weed boom. No matter what, Jarratt says the slimleaf onion population will never again be what it was in numbers or genetic diversity.

“It was beautiful, and it’s all gone. And what was the reason, you know?”

At the heart of the ecosystem disappearing act is a simple conflict — the inviting flower-filled meadows occur where people want to live. Fire suppression, aggressive invasive plants and the impact of off-road vehicles adds to the threat. 

But there is little legal protection for Garry oak ecosystem remnants — and plants like slimleaf onion often fall through the cracks. 

No environmental assessment needed for trail construction

Advocates worry the slimleaf onion, though rare, is not meaningfully protected by any level of government.

Locally, the City of Nanaimo has bylaws protecting trees, like the Garry oaks themselves, and has included known ecosystems for plants like slimleaf onion in environmentally sensitive zoning, which triggers extra requirements like professional assessment and protection during development. Some municipal ecosystems are protected from development by park areas like Nanaimo’s Lotus Pinnatus Park or Victoria’s Beacon Hill Park. 

Provincial legislation includes mandates for threatened plant species — but only applies within specified areas, like designated ecological reserves or in public forests (Crown land). The often-narrow parameters for designating protection can also lag behind — for example, the Forest and Range Practices Act hasn’t updated its list of protected plants since 2006. In any case, none of the existing provincial rules would apply to the View Street slimleaf onion. 

Neither is slimleaf onion on the list of plants recognized by the federal Species At Risk Act. The plant could potentially benefit tangentially from an ecosystem recovery plan created for five other Garry oak ecosystem plants, though that plan is only automatically enforceable on federal lands — that’s just four per cent of Canada and around one per cent of land in B.C. On private land in B.C.— such as the rail corridor — enforcement is voluntary. On public land, there is “piecemeal legislation” and “non-legal recommendations and guidance,” according to a 2022 audit. 

The federal government has the power under the Species At Risk Act to make emergency protection orders, but rarely does. 

When City of Nanaimo councillors unanimously approved the path extension in July of 2025, none of the laws protecting species at risk applied. And at just over 700 metres of gravel path, the Island Corridor Foundation project — on private land and not zoned as environmentally sensitive — didn’t require a permit or an environmental assessment. 

Charlotte Davis, Nanaimo’s Parks and Natural Areas deputy director, says the small area wasn’t zoned for protection because it wasn’t found during the last assessment — but she’s hopeful imaging advancements will make it easier to find small areas like these in the next one, as early as 2028.  

Davis also notes the project has increased access to safe trail for locals but that more engagement before construction “would have allowed us to be more aligned with the local naturalist community, with whom we share so many values, from the outset.” 

The plant advocates want to protect the slimleaf onion — and other rare plants — even when they grow outside legislated or bylawed protection areas, like the View Street meadow. 

“It wasn’t perfect, but there’s no Garry oak ecosystem that has been unimpacted. This is the best we have left,” Jarratt says.

“How do we control [the disturbance of native ecosystems] if we don’t even have them mapped, or we don’t even know where they are?” he asks. 

But B.C.’s Garry oak ecosystem hasn’t been comprehensively mapped since 1993. The last analysis, noting only five per cent of the ecosystem remaining, came from a 2006 study. 

With population growth and urban development, advocates say that measurement has changed in the last 20 years.

There are proposed projects in known Garry Ook ecosystem around Nanaimo; residential and industrial development in Cable Bay, nearly 200,000-square-foot data centre on East Wellington Road, housing in Linley Valley and a new subdivision in Harewood Plains — city council has asked provincial and federal governments for help protecting the latter. 

Nanaimo zoning bylaws require developers to take extra measures in noted sensitive areas but don’t prohibit new construction.

What is harder to measure are the unmapped survivors on private land — they can be legally built over, perhaps without anyone knowing they were there. “There’s just examples of this kind of stuff happening all the time, everywhere,” Jarratt says.

Vancouver Island railway project hopes to promote sustainability and recreation

The Nanaimo trail expansion is one small part of a larger vision for Vancouver Island’s rail corridor. 

The railway was originally built in the late 1800s by British Columbia’s coal king, Robert Dunsmuir on 800,000 hectares of Coast Salish, Nuu-Chah-Nulth and Kwakwa̱ka̱ʼwakw land. But by the early 2000s, the railway was faltering and the Island Corridor Foundation was formed to keep the corridor intact. 

“We are the little railway that could,” Island Corridor Foundation Chief Executive Officer Thomas Bevan says. A team of just four people, including himself, manage nearly 300 kilometres of rail corridor on Vancouver Island.

The foundation has a vision for sustainable transportation — passenger and freight rail service, alongside walking and cycling paths. Considering environmental and financial concerns as well as the interests of Indigenous groups and diverse local stakeholders — such as native plant advocates — is fraught. As Bevan puts it, nobody’s going to get everything they want. 

Still, environmental concerns figure strongly in the foundation’s mandate, and Bevan says they do what they can, like the $600,000 the group spent clearing invasive Scotch broom and blackberry along 125 kilometres of rail corridor, from Victoria to Qualicum Beach, B.C., in 2024 and 2025. Bevan says they are looking for funding to deal with the regrowth and other areas of the corridor.

Finding out too late

If there had been a voluntary environmental assessment of the trail expansion in Nanaimo, a qualified biologist would have done a survey, perhaps even checked the iNaturalist database where multiple slimleaf onion and other Garry oak plants were logged on View Street. They would have established a baseline for the existing population and potentially found other threatened species. They may have recommended shifting or narrowing the course of the path to avoid the most sensitive habitat. 

Instead, Bevan found out about the slimleaf onion after the fact, and says, as someone who follows Jarratt’s native plant advocacy, he felt awful. 

Going forward, Bevan says the Island Corridor Foundation will work on new policy for sensitive areas and has allocated $10,000 for restoration efforts — potentially weeding or reintroducing native plants. They are seeking a community partner to execute the work. 

Geselbracht, the forest school teacher, imagines a future where all the neighbours know more about the Garry oak ecosystem plants and remnants in their backyard, and help to bolster them — like he wishes he had done sooner.

For four years Geselbracht has been tending Garry oak seedlings with hopes to eventually reintroduce them in the View Street native plant patch, with his students. “If I’d had them doing some planting then maybe, on their walk to school, when they saw the excavator there, they would have said something.” 

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Summary

• Salt applied to roads and parking lots in winter is washing into the Lake Simcoe watershed and others throughout Ontario.
• Increasing salinity in the Lake Simcoe watershed is a threat to biodiversity and drinking water.
• One possible solution to the problem is introducing limited liability for owners of commercial parking lots, so they aren’t tempted to oversalt their properties to protect against “slip and fall” lawsuits.

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In February 2025, a small freshwater stream in Newmarket, Ont., was saltier than the ocean. The source? Winter road salt, washing off local parking lots and highways into the Lake Simcoe watershed.

As a result, concentrations of chloride — one of two minerals that make up table salt — in Western Creek exceeded 26,000 milligrams per litre of water. Meanwhile seawater typically sits at 19,400 milligrams of chloride per litre of water, according to the local conservation authority. 

For Christopher Wellen, an environmental scientist focused on hydrology and associate professor at Toronto Metropolitan University, this finding was not surprising: the Simcoe region, and many others across southern Ontario, have big salt problems. 

“It washes away from the roads, but it doesn’t just disappear,” Wellen said. “It goes where the water goes — that’s our groundwater, it’s our lakes, it’s our rivers — and has effects there.” 

For decades, the concentration of road salt in Lake Simcoe has been on the rise: 120,000 tonnes of it are used by communities in the watershed annually, Lake Simcoe Region Conservation Authority has reported. That amounts to roughly 227 kilograms of salt per person in the region every year.

Heavy salting in winter is not unusual, but Lake Simcoe has been monitored for decades, so it can act as a case study of exactly what happens when this much road salt is being applied. And it illuminates the environmental impact across the province where high-traffic areas, surrounded by cities, towns and a dense network of roadways, are inundated with salt.

Road salt and fresh water

Road salt is primarily made up of sodium chloride and is used to remove ice from roadways in the winter. But oversalting has widespread impacts on ecosystems, harming aquatic life and depleting biodiversity year-round.

“Every organism that lives in streams and rivers and lakes … has tolerances for all sorts of things like temperature fluctuations and salt fluctuations,” Wellen said. “If the water becomes too salty, they can find it really difficult to reproduce and thrive and continue to exist, basically.”

All this chloride does not break down, or simply wash away. It accumulates over time. 

“It’s quite possible that, if things don’t change, the food web could be quite affected,” Wellen added. The problem starts at the bottom of the food chain, he said, and makes its way up.

Since fish are mobile, they can generally avoid areas with high salt concentrations. The pronounced impacts are on the more stationary species, like critters that live in riverbeds. They also make up the base of the food chain, so when they are unable to survive the salty water, organisms higher up lose their food supply.

The Lake Simcoe Region Conservation Authority says on its website that winter salt has become a topic of “great concern” in the watershed, particularly because there isn’t an effective way to remove it. And Lake Simcoe, the largest lake wholly in southern Ontario, supplies drinking water for hundreds of thousands of residents — with hundreds of thousands more relying on groundwater aquifers in the watershed.

How salty is Lake Simcoe?

In Canada, the federal government provides long- and short-term guidelines for exposure to chloride before aquatic life is affected. At a concentration of 640 milligrams of chloride per litre of water for as little as 24 hours, aquatic life could be severely affected. For longer-term exposure, concentrations beyond 120 milligrams of chloride​ per litre of water would see harm to aquatic life such as a fish species declining over time.

David Lembcke, director of watershed science and monitoring at Lake Simcoe Region Conservation Authority, jokingly equates the latter threshold to a pack-a-day cigarette habit: “You’re going to have long-term impacts from that. There are some sensitive biota in the lake that will probably have reproductive, developmental, long-term impacts at those levels.” 

The authority produced a report more than a decade ago that already showed chloride concentrations were impacting these aquatic species in 64 per cent of the Lake Simcoe watershed.

In the lake itself, the concentration in February was around 61 milligrams of chloride​ per litre of water, Lembcke said, which is about half of the long-term exposure guideline set by the province. But that level has been steadily increasing by 0.7 milligrams of chloride per litre of water annually, according to the conservation authority. Elsewhere in the watershed, especially in tributaries in urban areas like Hotchkiss Creek and West Holland River, concentrations regularly exceed both guidelines, Lembcke said, and long after winter ends.

“We have this incredibly persistent, relentless increasing trend in lake [salt] concentrations,” Lembcke said. “Certainly the potential is there: if we don’t curb the amount of salt that we’re using, drinking water could be impacted.”

For drinking water, the Ontario objective is 250 milligrams of chloride​ per litre of water, but this is based on taste, not health considerations. For people who need to limit their sodium intake for things like high blood pressure, or kidney or liver diseases, Health Canada recommends that salt in water shouldn’t exceed 20 milligrams per litre.

In Waterloo, Ont., groundwater and consequently drinking water has already been impacted; given high concentrations in some areas, the city has to mix groundwater from different wells to average out chloride levels across the region. They’ve campaigned hard for curbing road salt use, since current water and wastewater treatment doesn’t remove salt, and the municipality explains on their website that removing it requires expensive, energy-intensive treatment. And that would mean higher water costs for the community.

How do you solve a problem like road salt?

While some communities look to solutions such as replacements for road salt, they also carry their own challenges: alternatives like beet juice or sodium acetate can be prohibitively expensive, and their long-term effects on ecosystems aren’t entirely known. 

Some experts and activists are looking to stop the problem at its source. Commercial parking lots are among the biggest culprits for oversalting, likely since they are liable for any injury that occurs on snow or ice on their properties.

“The problem that we keep seeing is that small businesses or big parking lots are oversalting, and it’s a perverse incentive structure where they feel like they have to do it to protect themselves against the slip and fall [lawsuits],” Jonathan Scott, executive director of the Rescue Lake Simcoe Coalition, said. Scott is chair of the Nottawasaga Valley Conservation Authority and a Bradford West Gwillimbury councillor.

“It’s not any safer. It’s worse for the environment. It’s worse for small businesses in terms of increased costs,” he said.

Proponents including Scott and Lembcke are arguing to modernize the law by offering limited liability, or a stronger defence against being sued, to those businesses who get an accepted certification such as Smart About Salt, and learn how to implement best salting practices for public safety and the environment alike. 

“If you’re following best practices and if you’re doing the right thing as a winter maintenance operator, that should be a defence for the operator and the property owner against slip and fall claims,” Scott said. “It seems like such a simple pro-business, pro-environment legal reform that wouldn’t cost us anything.” 

Scott points to New Hampshire, a state with comparable winter conditions to Ontario, as an example. The state reduced its salt pollution by 25 to 45 per cent by granting limited liability protection to certified commercial salt applicators. 

Wellen and his team have done modelling studies to see what would happen if a legal reform like this was adopted in the Lake Simcoe area; he said the results are promising, finding it could decrease the concentrations in the lake significantly by the end of the century.

But the province, who would have to make that regulatory change, has yet to sign on.

“It seems to be one of those problems that’s entirely of our own making, in which case it should be something that we can fix,” Lembcke said. “I’m optimistic that it’s something that we can address.”

— With files from Fatima Syed

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For the first six months after Winnipeg Transit’s $20.4-million network overhaul, city officials had little information to assess how well the new system was working.

Flaws in the vision meant to rekindle the city’s relationship with transit have been widely reported — ridership is down, service hours are shorter and passengers are so underwhelmed, some users, in rare cases, have reportedly bought cars for the first time. Instead of encouraging more Winnipeggers onto the bus, the system appears to be driving users away.

The city’s data had been plagued by a faulty GPS tracking system that left major gaps in the first four months of ridership and performance numbers, which prevented Winnipeg transit from making significant adjustments to the system. 

The Narwhal and the Winnipeg Free Press set out to understand when and why ridership was lagging. While the independent analysis showed declines on weeknights and weekends are far steeper than previously reported, transit officials warned the city’s publicly available figures are unreliable.

The city’s own data analysis, which estimates daily ridership based on sensors installed on about 20 per cent of the buses, shows the average weekday passengers dropped nearly 14 per cent this fall compared to a year ago, and is expected to result in a $8.5-million hit to fare revenue this year.

Bjorn Radstrom, manager of service development for Winnipeg Transit, said a problem with transit’s GPS system — which was not resolved until early November — means the city is missing reliable information from September and October, the busiest months of the year, leaving him “leery to draw any solid conclusions” from the numbers.

“The GPS problem has tied our hands far more than people realize,” Radstrom said. 

The lack of information is problematic, particularly during the early stages of an overhaul, Orly Linovski, an associate professor of city planning at the University of Manitoba, said.

“It’s impossible to make evidence-informed decisions if we don’t have the evidence,” Linovski said.

‘No question’ ridership dropped after significant transit overhaul

Passenger counts are one of several metrics transit planners use to evaluate whether the network is working as intended, identify problem areas and make future adjustments. In the wake of what Winnipeg Mayor Scott Gillingham has called the “most significant change to transit” in the city’s history, a lack of reliable ridership numbers and on-time performance data has made planning decisions more challenging, Radstrom said. 

Still, “We do know ridership has dropped,” he said. “There’s no question.”

Between September and December 2025, approximately 178,500 people boarded a bus every weekday, down from just over 207,000, or 14 per cent, the year prior.

But according to The Narwhal and Free Press analysis, ridership appears to decline more steeply after students and rush-hour commuters get home. Passenger counts decreased 23 per cent during the evening hours (6:30-10:30 p.m.), while nighttime ridership (after 10:30 p.m.) dropped nearly 40 per cent. 

Weekend drops were even more dramatic, prompting surprise from Radstrom. While he later confirmed The Narwhal and Free Press’s calculations were correct based on the publicly available passenger counts, he stressed the city’s data was unreliable. 

The city only sampled about half the number of trips it normally would on Saturdays and Sundays, meaning the counts are more likely to be inaccurate, he explained, and are based almost exclusively on November and December, when ridership starts a seasonal tail-off. 

Based on data from the tap-to-ride (Peggo) fare system and ticket sales, Winnipeg Transit calculated ridership dropped 22 per cent on Saturdays and 18 per cent on Sundays. Those drops are each about 50 percentage points lower than the numbers in the city’s publicly available database — further demonstrating a marked disparity between datasets.

Better service is the key to increasing transit use

Radstrom expected some people to stop riding the bus as service changed, but that ridership would recover as new users realized there is “better, more frequent service closer to them,” he said. 

As part of the network redesign, transit reduced late-night operating hours. As a result, The Narwhal and Free Press analysis found, the number of nighttime bus trips across the city dropped 22 per cent on weekday evenings and nearly 50 per cent on weekday nights. The nighttime service cuts were widely criticized by riders, prompting the city to extend hours for its on-demand service. In the spring, it plans to juggle some route schedules to extend service until after midnight. 

“We wanted to start doing this in September with the summer data, but we didn’t have it because of GPS problems. We also wanted to start doing it earlier with fall data, but we didn’t have it.”

It’s only in recent weeks Radstrom and other planners have been able to “dig in” and plan adjustments for spring. Radstrom said transit wants to “demonstrate some actual progress” when April’s schedule is released, and will be able to “do a few really good things … but not as much as if we’d had all the data for the full amount of time we wanted it.” 

On Wednesday, Winnipeg Transit delivered an unplanned verbal report to the city’s public works committee acknowledging the GPS issues have now been resolved to within one per cent of baseline error levels. 

Linovski said the city needs more than just numbers to assess how well the new network is performing. 

“[Ridership data] gives us no information about why people are taking transit or not taking transit. It gives us no information about what their experience is like on transit,” she said, suggesting surveying users and non-users would help form a clearer picture. 

“Service really needs to improve if you’re going to switch people over to transit.” 

Increased funding increases ridership … and decreases pollution transit advocates

A 2018 study by the Canadian Urban Transit Association has determined a 10 per cent increase in hours a bus is on the road (called vehicle revenue hours) leads to a 10 per cent increase in ridership. The association also found that a 10 per cent increase to operating budgets translates to a 5.5 per cent increase in revenue hours, even when the costs of labour, fuel and maintenance are factored in.

Despite steadily increasing its operating budget and allocating more property tax dollars to Winnipeg Transit since 2020, it is underfunded compared to agencies across the country. 

In late January, James Van Gerwen, president of Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1505, which represents transit operators, was one of several public advocacy group representatives to call on the province to increase climate funding in its upcoming budget. Van Gerwen advocated specifically for the province to restore a 50-50 transit funding partnership with the City of Winnipeg that was cut in 2016. 

Since then, the Manitoba government has provided about $42 million to Winnipeg Transit every year. As the operating budget has grown, the province’s share of the costs has shrunk to just 15 per cent. 

Van Gerwen is confident “the ridership will be there” with a properly funded system that can commit to expanded service, more safety and more reliability.

Radstrom is on the same page. A healthier budget will allow him to implement the changes needed to make the system convenient for more riders, and mitigate the impacts of schedule interruptions like mechanical failures.

And experts agree: the more people who ride the bus, the greater the benefits in terms of carbon pollution. “Just getting people on a bus is a huge reduction in greenhouse gas emissions,” the Canadian Urban Transit Association’s communications director, Jon MacMull, said. “Transit is in itself an emissions reduction tool, and it should be considered a priority for investment.”

Julia-Simone Rutgers is a reporter covering environmental issues in Manitoba. Her position is part of a partnership between The Narwhal and the Winnipeg Free Press.

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With a metre of snow piled in front of my house, the plants beneath it aren’t exactly top of mind. The heath and New England aster, goldenrod and milkweed are tucked away for the winter but will re-emerge in all their glory come spring. They’ve only been there for a few years now, gradually overtaking the sod that covered our yard when we moved in. We let it go wild, and wild it has gone.

Should I be worried about contravening a city bylaw limiting grass and weeds to 20 centimetres high? Maybe — if you stuck a school ruler in our garden in full bloom, you’d likely never find it again. But the regulation doesn’t seem to be heavily enforced, at least by my eye, nor is it clear on what constitutes a weed. I hope the species we’re growing, which are refuges and resources for pollinators, would be exempt.

But there are certainly some dandelions lingering among the plants — bees like them too, you know! — and you’ll definitely find clover, a great nitrogen fixer but also considered a weed by many. But enough about my garden, because I certainly don’t want to encourage a neighbour to complain and a bylaw officer to come knocking — or mowing.

Because that’s exactly what’s happening in other Ontario municipalities.

Despite the biodiversity crisis we find ourselves in as a nation — and around the world — diverse, natural gardens are being extinguished by some people’s preference for their neighbours’ lawn to be tidy and uniform.

In Burlington, the Barnes family saw their naturalized garden — which included many of the same species I have, and more — razed by the city after repeated warnings and threats of fines if they didn’t trim it back themselves.

According to the city, the Barnes’ garden didn’t warrant the title of a naturalized space that would be immune to the 20-centimetre rule (apparently this is a commonly agreed-upon height for plants), despite it being popular with bees and butterflies. Much of the city’s argument, according to recent reporting on the case by the Toronto Star, appears to rest on the perceived lack of maintenance in the Barnes’ garden.

So the city threatened a $10,000-a-day fine, on top of a flat $100,000 fee, until the plants were trimmed. 

Now, the City of Burlington is taking Karen Barnes to court in March for up to $400,000 of those fines, after city crews destroyed the garden she carefully cultivated — several times. 

The Barneses aren’t alone in their fight.

As the Toronto Star reported, Mississauga resident Wolf Ruck won a years-long battle earlier this month, when a judge ruled the city’s bylaw specifying grass height and weed-control requirements are unconstitutional. It also meant Ruck was not on the hook for the city’s costs after it mowed down his naturalized garden, just as Burlington did to the Barnes’ garden. The bylaw, the judge found, was an infringement upon Ruck’s right to freedom of expression. And there are several other examples of bylaws across the province restricting garden growth — and cases where residents crossed their city’s limit.

Yet, most of us don’t live under the rule of a homeowner association — a type of community organization common in the U.S., and less so in Canada, that collects dues from its members (residents in these communities don’t have an option to forgo membership) and can dictate everything from the colour you paint your house to shed size to garden aesthetics. 

Here, if my next-door neighbour wants to paint their house hot pink, they can do it and I can live with it. They’re not harming anyone. So why are garden choices still not a homeowner’s alone?

Beyond the subjective matter of aesthetic preferences, native plants — and many so-called “weeds” — store planet-warming carbon dioxide, provide pollen for insects at the foundation of our food systems and require less water and maintenance than a lawn. It’s why a lot of cities, Burlington and Mississauga included, have planted their own pollinator gardens.

Cracking down on people who want to let their own garden grow naturally is a waste of time for municipal staff, and money for taxpayers. Court cases aren’t cheap and neither are staff hours.

On her fundraising page for the upcoming court case, Barnes says her family has been “targeted and harassed for daring to have a yard that looks ‘different’ from the norm.” 

If aesthetics are the primary concern here, I’d point out that cities already allow (and build) unsightly infrastructure that has promised benefits beyond its appearance. For instance, the paved parking pads that are cropping up around cities. If anyone wants to argue parking pads provide a more necessary function than a naturalized garden, I’d wager you don’t need your car as much as a bee needs pollen.

So let them have it. Let people have their gardens, however they prefer them, and let nature reclaim a tiny fraction of the space it has lost to cities. I’d say we owe it that much.

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Quebec National Assembly member Sylvie D’Amours bears no ill will toward the person who fired a pellet gun at her constituency office windows in October 2024, peppering them with small dents. She wasn’t there when the incident occurred, and she doesn’t think the person responsible meant to harm anyone. 

“It seemed like it was just an act of mischief — a way of saying, ‘I’m shocked and I’m showing you my anger.’ It wasn’t personal,” the elected official for the riding of Mirabel told The Narwhal in French.

D’Amours suspects the incident had something to do with early versions of the province’s new flood maps, which had just been released by the Communauté métropolitaine de Montréal, a regional planning organization for the Greater Montreal Area. The maps were in a preliminary report that announced 15,508 buildings in Greater Montreal — including nearly 20,000 homes, representing close to $10 billion in property value — would now fall within the province’s newly drawn flood zones. Across the province, The Canadian Press reported, as many as 77,000 homes could be included within the new flood zones.

The weeks following lent themselves to her theory of what prompted the pellets. D’Amours, whose riding encompasses multiple suburbs along Montreal’s North Shore, said she began facing a flurry of hostility over the flood maps: threats on social media, angry phone calls, even a confrontation at the grocery store. Many were angry at how the government was going about modernizing the maps and upset at how the maps might affect their home values. The situation was serious enough that she closed her office out of concern for her safety and that of her employees.

What should have been a technical exercise in Quebec quickly became a political flashpoint, one playing out across the country. 

As provinces and municipalities amend decades-old flood maps and strengthen flood preparedness measures in the face of inclement climate change, a vocal minority of homeowners are pushing back. Some argue governments have failed to properly consult local communities and overlooked personal, on-the-ground mitigation measures. Others say their elected officials are focusing too much on penalizing property owners instead of initiatives that would reduce flood risk. But most express concern about their home values and insurance costs: last year, insurance company Desjardins announced it would no longer offer mortgages in Quebec’s high-risk flood zones.

The result has been a country-wide string of reversals and delays in flood-risk planning. On Nov. 17, 2025, the town of Summerside, P.E.I., rejected a bylaw that would have designated more of the city as a floodplain after residents warned it could hurt property values. Last year, Nova Scotia’s government scrapped robust flooding-related legislation that had already secured all-party support following consultations with concerned homeowners. In Calgary, a neighbourhood association argued in November that government-funded infrastructure upgrades, not development restrictions, should be the city’s first line of protection. And as B.C.’s Fraser Valley coped with another atmospheric river in December, dairy farmers, Indigenous leaders and the Insurance Bureau of Canada all criticized the province’s failure to fulfil flood mitigation promises made after similar catastrophic floods in 2021. 

Kate Sherren, director of Dalhousie University’s School for Resource and Environmental Studies, said the task of updating flood maps is technically complicated, given the uncertainties of climate change, as well as politically fraught.

“I’m not an engineer, but I certainly wouldn’t like to have to come up with a really reliable flood-risk map,” she said. “It’s very difficult, but we kind of have to try, right?”

Canada is ‘20 years behind’ on flood planning

Daniel Henstra, co-lead of the University of Waterloo’s Climate Risk Research Group, said flooding remains the dominant climate risk across Canada.

According to Public Safety Canada, 80 per cent of Canadian cities are located on floodplains — including major cities like Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Ottawa and Fredericton. In 2020, the federal agency estimated that 1.5 million households, or 10 per cent of all households in Canada, were highly exposed to flooding.

And yet, Henstra said, “We’re probably 20 years behind other countries on this.”

Canada was the last G7 country to introduce residential insurance coverage for overland flooding because existing flood maps were so outdated. It remains the only G7 country without national, publicly available flood maps — a problem the federal government is trying to fix. A 2020 University of Waterloo survey of 2,500 people in Canada living in designated flood-risk areas found only six per cent knew they were at risk.

That lack of experience with flood maps — combined with the lack of action from governments — contributes to homeowners being upset when maps are updated, Henstra said. 

“[Homeowners] are not used to it, and therefore they don’t necessarily trust the process,” Henstra said. “They already have very low awareness of their own flood risk when new maps suddenly appear and declare that their neighborhood is at high risk. It stands to reason that they would worry about their property value when they go to sell their house.” 

He emphasized that flood maps are important to public safety, but also economic stability: when risk is disclosed upfront, he said research shows property values typically dip by two to six per cent, often temporarily. But after a major flood, values can collapse, insurers pull out and governments face pressure to rebuild homes in the same high-risk locations.

“That doesn’t preserve wealth. It just transfers the cost of inaction onto future homeowners and taxpayers,” Henstra said. By contrast, risk disclosure allows buyers, sellers, lenders, realtors and insurers, “to plan appropriately” and invest in protection and resilience at both the property and community level.

Opposition to new flood maps in Quebec cites lack of government education and care

D’Amours thinks many Montreal residents panicked because they assumed the draft maps the Communauté métropolitaine de Montréal published were final and about to be adopted by the Quebec government. In fact, the maps were only preliminary, with final maps expected to be published progressively as they are approved, starting in March 2026.

But Marie-Claude Nolin understood the maps weren’t final. Yet the recently retired education worker from the Montreal suburb of Vaudreuil-Dorion became a co-founder of the advocacy group Regroupement des citoyens riverains du Québec, or the Quebec Shoreline Residents’ Association. The group launched a petition urging the provincial government to pause the rollout of new flood-risk maps until residents better understand how the changes will affect them and what they perceive to be errors are addressed.

Nolin said too many residents have yet to even see the preliminary maps. She said residents have told her they initially dismissed invitations from the municipalities to attend public consultations: “Several people … thought, ‘I live so far from the water, this must be a mistake.’ ”

Fellow organizer Pier-Luc Cauchon, a construction project manager in Île Bizard — just off the coast of the Island of Montreal — said he doesn’t understand the methodology behind the new zones. At a public meeting in 2024, Cauchon said the Communauté métropolitaine de Montréal’s chief engineer had told him the province had added extra “risk coefficients” on top of the usual international standards for flood recurrence, using the worst-case scenario for projected high-water levels. When Cauchon asked for the calculations, none were provided, he said.

Another of Nolin and Cauchon’s objections is that the current system has no specific point of contact for airing concerns, which makes contesting the maps difficult. Cauchon says he’s heard cases of people being able to get modifications after persistent lobbying but “The average citizen who doesn’t have the time can’t get it changed. There’s injustice in that.”

Nolin and Cauchon eventually received a total of 2,395 signatures on their petition. They say they haven’t heard back from the province. 

Both the Communauté métropolitaine and Quebec’s Environment Ministry defended their consultation process in emails to The Narwhal. 

Jennifer Guthrie, a communications consultant for the Communauté métropolitaine, said the additional “risk coefficients” account for “climate-change uncertainty” across all rivers and waterways, as well as the risk of “compromised management of dams and reservoirs” that help mitigate flooding on rivers such as the Ottawa and St. Lawrence. 

Louis Potvin, a spokesperson for Quebec’s Environment Ministry, said the flood mapping is based on internationally recognized scientific principles developed through consultations with academic, municipal, governmental and private-sector experts. Potvin said the methodology was set out in a new provincial guide published in June 2025, which is nearly a year after the Communauté métropolitaine’s initial consultations.

Potvin did not respond to The Narwhal’s questions about why the province has not formally replied to the petition or whether the government plans to engage directly with its signatories. He acknowledged the preliminary maps have raised concerns and said residents can submit questions through an online form that the ministry responds to systematically. He added that a mechanism to request revisions will be clarified once the final maps are officially released.

In the meantime, Nolin says people they know are already being affected. “We’ve had new homeowners say they’ve seen insurance costs double,” she said in French.

This, too, is a problem Canada could have anticipated. A federal promise to offer insurance support in highest-risk flood areas has been languishing for years.

The problem with exemptions

Nolin insists her group’s goal is not to deny the increased flood risks brought on by climate change, but simply to be better consulted on determining who is at risk. 

Alain Bourque, executive director of Ouranos, a climate-focused research consortium that collaborated with the Quebec government on the new flood maps, doesn’t deny governments can stumble in consultations and fail to show empathy for those affected. 

However, he said, exemptions can help set the stage for costly disasters. He highlights as examples the 2017 and 2019 floods in Montreal. Catastrophe Indices and Quantification, a firm that tracks and tallies insured losses from natural disasters, estimated that the Halloween storm that hit Eastern Canada in 2019 caused $189 million in insured damages in Quebec alone. More recently, the firm estimated Hurricane Debby in 2024 caused close to $2.5 billion in insured flooding-related damages in Quebec.

Bourque said impacts were so severe “because [the government] was too relaxed on regulation — you pile up value here, you develop the economy there and then it gets seriously damaged and wiped out. And everyone expects the government to pay the bill at the end of the day.”

And one homeowner’s actions, including attempts to get exempted, inevitably affects neighbours. Take Cauchon’s argument that Montreal’s maps should take into account individual flood-proofing measures — such as elevated foundations — when assigning a risk level. Sherren, from Dalhousie, said a rush to lift single homes could increase flooding risk for next door neighbours that now live at the bottom of a slope.

That’s why in Truro, N.S., she said, development is still allowed in some high-risk areas, but with a key condition: builders can’t truck in new soil to raise homes and must instead use what’s already on the property. The logic is that any ground they raise is offset by a lower area elsewhere on the lot—leaving floodwaters somewhere to go, rather than pushing the risk onto neighbouring properties. 

Neighbourliness is the same reason why Toronto has stopped allowing most homeowners to pave over their yards for parking: if hard surfaces prevent water from soaking into the ground, it diverts to the gutter and eventually a storm drain, which increases flood risks elsewhere.

A vocal minority can delay or prevent public education about true flood risk

Sherren has studied public attitudes toward flood mapping in Nova Scotia. She has found most respondents favour the idea, viewing flood-risk information as useful whether they’re buying or renting a home. But opinions shifted when people were asked to consider potential impact on property values: a minority of respondents argued flood-risk maps should be private and accessible only to the property owner, not the broader public.

“But even a very small minority of unhappy people — particularly if they have money, if they have power — can come in and cause entire mapping programs to be kind of withdrawn, because the political will isn’t strong enough to hold when these people get angry,” she said.

In February 2024, the Conservative government of Nova Scotia announced it was scrapping the Coastal Protection Act, despite it undergoing three rounds of public consultation and passing in 2019 with all-party support.

Documents obtained by CBC through access-to-information laws show that, in the years when the act had stalled, most public submissions to Environment Minister Tim Halman supported the legislation. Only a small number of property owners and real-estate interests warned of lower land values or limited redevelopment. Yet Halman pointed to those concerns when announcing another round of “targeted” consultations. 

Had it taken effect, the act would have “outlined exactly how and where people can build in a way that protects them from rising seas,” CBC reported. Instead, the government released an online mapping tool that shows the “worst-case scenario for coastal properties in the year 2100 based on current sea-level projections,” letting citizens make an “informed decision” about their property.

But Sherren said the tool’s narrow focus on the coastline doesn’t account for storm surges, coastal topography or even the buffering effects of tidal wetlands. It also omits the potential for rain-driven flooding.

She believes the decision to scrap the act blindsided more than a few municipalities, which might have held off developing their own rules, assuming the province’s framework was imminent. “It put them five or 10 years behind,” Sherren said.

Concerns that Quebec’s new flooding regulations will affect home prices have drawn serious political support: two provincial politicians have publicly endorsed Nolin and Cauchon’s petition. A coalition of 26 Quebec mayors have also released an open letter arguing for the need to accommodate homeowners’ concerns. 

“We believe that the government proposal submitted for consultation can be improved by modifications that will minimize the impact on property values and reduce the uncertainty that citizens have to deal with,” the coalition wrote in French. 

The letter did not specify how the province should achieve that balance. The Canadian Climate Institute said the mayors’ statement amounted to “political pressure” to weaken the proposed framework, arguing that updated and accessible flood-risk maps do not significantly affect access to insurance or mortgages.

Eight months after announcing its first preliminary maps, Quebec officials downgraded the number of homes that would fall in the newly-designated flood zones from 77,000 to 35,000. Officials also emphasized no one would be forced to leave their homes under the new management plan. But the rules would bar new construction in the highest-risk areas and prohibit rebuilding if houses in those zones are destroyed by flooding.

Henstra said flood mapping is more effective when framed as “shared problem solving,” rather than something being done to people. Flood risk in Canada, he adds, is also highly concentrated: roughly 10 per cent of homes account for more than 90 per cent of losses. 

“If we know where those areas are, and that is all transparent,” he said, “we can stop spraying money around the country on disaster mitigation and focus our scarce resources.”

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Matt Thomson spends his free time pushing toward his yearly goal of biking 10,000 kilometres around Orillia, Ont. A furniture-maker by trade, he also builds bat boxes and installs pollinator gardens to support the forests, lakes and wetlands he’s loved his entire life. Lately, he’s been getting worried.

A few kilometres from his home in Severn Township, the pinch of land between lakes Couchiching and Simcoe and Georgian Bay, developer LIV Communities and its partner Bosseini Living, cut a trail through a wetland, clearing trees and catching the community off-guard. The trail connects a private beachside park with the approximately 180-home subdivision the developers are building. Thomson began raising the issue to neighbours, the municipality and then local news in early 2024 to see what could be done.

“People were concerned,” Thomson said. “A lot of people were thinking … ‘If this developer can get away with building a road through a wetland, who else is going to do it?’ ” Residents worry the disruption could worsen flooding in the area this spring but municipal officials say they have no authority to intervene. And, ultimately, the approximately 250-metre long path has already been laid and opened to residents of the Serenity Bay subdivision — with cameras making sure no one else trespasses.

In June, Severn Township Mayor Mike Burkett told Orillia Matters that to him, the path is “not a walkway. It’s a road,” calling it “upsetting.” But in late November, Severn Township told The Narwhal in a statement that “The trail is not a road.” The township said the subdivision application, “which encompasses the multi-use trail within its limits, underwent a thorough review during the approval process by the Township of Severn and the County of Simcoe, the ultimate authority for subdivision approvals.” That review included an environmental impact study, archaeological assessment and stormwater management report, according to the statement.

 “The actions undertaken by the developer to establish a pathway are within their rights,” it continued.

However, the statement explained, once the Serenity Bay pathway was built, “the work was more extensive than what was proposed, and we learned about it through local media.” At the time, Burkett told Orillia Matters he was surprised by the development, adding he wished “residents had said something” before the path was built, but “It was all done before we even were aware.” At this point, according to the statement, the township notified the Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry.

The province can hand down fines for degrading a wetland, among other measures. The primary regulation is the Conservation Authorities Act, under which the ministry can fine $50,000 or more, mandate the developer to remediate the land or even order jail time. But the wetland crossed by the path lies just beyond the border of two different conservation authorities, putting it outside their jurisdiction. And LIV Communities does not appear to have broken any rules.

For Thomson, the options are few. He could attempt to challenge the development at the Ontario Land Tribunal — a process he feels is too expensive and uncertain, or hope the ministry steps in. Neither seems likely.

“The damage is already done,” he said. “Once a wetland is destroyed, you can’t really undo that.”

LIV Communities, Bosseini Living and the Ministry of Natural Resources did not respond to The Narwhal’s detailed questions about building in provincially significant wetlands. Rama First Nation, whose traditional territory includes the wetland, said it was not consulted by the developer or province. “Chief and Council of Chippewas of Rama First Nation are deeply concerned by reports of unauthorized road construction through a protected wetland in our traditional territory,” it told The Narwhal in an emailed statement.

The chief and council continued that wetlands are sacred to Anishinaabe people, and “carry spirit and memory, and their protection is a shared responsibility.”

The nation said developments that may adversely affect Treaty Rights must be preceded by consultation with First Nations. “Meaningful consultation is a legal responsibility and requirement — not an optional step of the planning process. We call on all levels of government to ensure accountability, require immediate remediation and work in partnership with Rama First Nation to prevent further harm,” the statement said.

What happened in Severn reflects a much larger shift across Ontario, one that experts warn is reshaping the province’s wetlands far beyond a single disputed path.

Ontario contains about six per cent of the world’s wetlands, but has lost nearly three-quarters of what it once had. Those losses have continued under recent provincial policies encouraging rapid development and easing restrictions for environmentally sensitive areas. “We’re getting a taste of how things are going across the province, because we’re forcing a lot of these housing projects,” Thomson said. “Environmental stuff comes last.”

Ontario wetlands are now ‘pretty easy’ to ‘take a bite out of,’ experts say

Swamps, fens, marshes and bogs, like the sprawling peatlands of northern Ontario, are critical in the face of mounting climate change. They’ve been called “nature’s kidneys,” for their ability to purify environmental pollutants. They support 20 per cent of species at risk, significantly reduce floods and the consequent damage costs by up to 38 per cent and store 29 billion tonnes of carbon in the province. 

And the Orillia area is a powerhouse. In a 2023 study published in the Journal of Geophysical Research, Florin Pendea and others from Lakehead University found the type of wetlands in the Lake Simcoe watershed were 50 per cent more effective in storing carbon than other wetland ecosystems they studied, second only to salt marshes along seashores. This is because the areas are nutrient-rich, highly productive and frequently flooded — all conditions that boost organic matter build-up while slowing decomposition.

The wetland where the new path appeared is listed as provincially significant on government maps, meaning it’s identified by the province as being valuable for its ability to store groundwater and manage flooding, provide wildlife habitat and support biodiversity, among other measures. Provincially significant wetlands, like this one, are granted stricter protections than others, but under environmental protection zoning for the area in Severn, “passive outdoor recreational activities, such as trails,” are allowed, according to the township. While the Severn wetland falls just outside the jurisdiction of any conservation authority, the watershed monitoring agencies generally regulate areas like this across southern Ontario and some of the north.

But it’s getting harder and harder to protect any wetland under the current Ontario government.

Under changes introduced by Premier Doug Ford in the last few years, including Bill 23, the Build Homes Faster Act, the Ontario Wetland Evaluation System was rewritten in ways that make it easier for developers to downgrade or remove protections. 

Species at risk no longer factor into evaluations. Wetlands that function as interdependent ecosystems can no longer be “complexed” together, which means portions of larger interconnected wetland systems can be carved off and lose protection. And consultants hired by developers can re-evaluate wetlands and upload revised maps directly to the provincial database with no oversight from the ministry.

“Many wetlands that were formerly protected — under these new, more loosey-goosey rules [they] don’t meet that bar anymore, and so developers can go and re-evaluate them and have portions of a provincially significant wetland complex de-listed,” Rebecca Rooney, the founder of the Waterloo Wetland Laboratory at the University of Waterloo, said. “That has occurred in many watersheds across Ontario.” Earlier this year, Mississippi Valley Conservation Authority reported this sort of delisting in their jurisdiction east of Ottawa.

When the changes were proposed in 2022, Rooney and a group of more than 70 aquatic scientists and experts, as part of the group Save Ontario Wetlands, signed a letter saying these changes remove key oversight responsibilities, create a piece-meal and under-resourced evaluation process and disregard the importance of these areas for threatened species.

Further, changes to the Conservation Authorities Act have included the recently proposed consolidation of the number of watershed protection agencies across Ontario from 36 into seven, and weakened these authorities’ ability to protect wetlands.

While the province announced a $9.6-million investment to “restore and enhance wetlands” to protect communities from flooding and other climate-driven events in fall 2025, the question of enforcement and consequences when wetlands are destroyed remains. 

Insurance companies are also recognizing the importance of protecting these ecosystems for their bottom line. Intact Financial Corporation is funding research on maintaining wetlands in their natural state to reduce flood damage. A computer simulation of a pilot site in Waterloo calculated a savings of $51.1 million in damage costs, thanks to a natural wetland.

Yet changes to the evaluation system makes it possible for wetlands to quietly disappear on paper long before anyone recognizes the consequences on the ground. “There’s no watchdog, nobody’s really tracking what’s happening,” Rooney said. “It’s pretty easy now to take a bite out of a provincially significant wetland.”

The trials of citizen wetland monitors in Ontario

In 2023, a Severn resident was reprimanded for dredging and operating a vehicle in a provincially significant wetland, according to local media. The penalties were a $4,000 invoice from the township for the cost of gates to keep him out and a stop-work order from the Ministry of Natural Resources. 

At the time, Mayor Burkett told Orillia Matters the small township relies on complaints from the public to respond to these issues, echoing his stance on the Serenity Bay development. But it has proven difficult to figure out just what development is happening, and if it’s legal, before shovels are in the ground. 

After, there’s little to no recourse.

For residents like Thomson, the Ontario Land Tribunal is often the only remaining avenue to challenge development. 

Rooney served as an expert witness in one such case involving an area of the Greater Cataraqui Marsh in Kingston, Ont., part of which is a provincially significant wetland where homes and commercial buildings were proposed. Kingston’s city council originally denied the developer’s application, defending this decision at the tribunal after the developer filed an appeal. 

During the hearings, it came to light that a portion of the wetland was no longer listed as provincially significant. This is despite prior protection as part of the larger complex, according to Laura Jean Cameron, a professor of geography and planning at Queen’s University, and one of several residents who opposed the project. But it was hard for citizens to determine what was no longer listed.

“It’s endlessly frustrating,” Cameron said.

Even with a background in historical geography, Cameron struggled to find clear records showing how parts of the Kingston marsh had been designated provincially significant in the past, and when those borders changed. Using provincial maps, she learned the borders of the wetland complex had been updated in 2024. 

Then, in the hearing, Cameron said it was confirmed the developer paid for the re-evaluation that resulted in the map being changed.

“It’s not straightforward at all,” she said. “Citizens can have the up-to-date information, but there’s no legacy information to make the comparison, so you don’t know what’s changed.”

To understand all of this, Cameron worked with geospatial librarians and data scientists, assembling information from past wetland maps to see how and when the wetland’s designation changed and which carved out portions could now be built upon more easily. It’s work most residents would never have the time or expertise to do.

“If citizens are supposed to speak up, they need people to help interpret these sources of information,” Cameron said.

Despite the effort, after five weeks of hearings in early 2024, the tribunal sided with the developer and zoning was ultimately approved by the province, allowing the development to move ahead for further approvals. “Because of the expense and all the time, it’s going to make people just feel like there’s no point in fighting these things at that tribunal level,” Cameron said. 

For the area in Severn, where the provincially significant wetland status still stands, Cameron sees troubling parallels. “My worry for the citizens of Orillia is that no action will be taken by the ministry or anyone — that the developer will face no consequences,” she said in an email to The Narwhal. “And ‘fixing’ their mistake would be a matter of permit signing and paperwork, not the removal of the road or an attempt to repair the wetland.” 

Thomson fears the same. He continues biking in the area, watching construction advance. He worries about flooding come next spring. “There’s very little attention paid to what’s being lost,” Thomson said.

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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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Last week, a member of Ontario’s Doug Ford government touted the importance of access to nature to his colleagues. 

Andrew Dowie, MPP for Windsor-Tecumseh, is spearheading Bill 26, new legislation that would amend the provincial parks law to include two new classes of parks: urban and adventure. 

The primary purpose is to facilitate the creation of a new provincial park east of Toronto in Uxbridge by connecting Greenbelt lands with rehabilitated private quarries. The legislation will also aim to create other urban and adventure parks like it. 

The bill is currently being reviewed by a government committee, which heard from members of the public this week. 

Dowie, who serves as the parliamentary assistant to the minister of the environment, conservation and parks, told his colleagues the bill codifies the idea that a growing Ontario needs different kinds of natural spaces. 

“Urban parks make nature accessible where Ontarians now live in growing towns, expanding cities and suburban communities,” he told the committee on Nov. 17. “Urban parks don’t replace traditional provincial parks. They simply acknowledge that in a province of 15 million people, proximity matters.” 

And in truth, natural spaces are getting farther and farther away from urban centres, as those centres sprawl farther and farther out.

Adventure parks, he said, “bring people into nature in different ways,” by encouraging outdoor activities like cycling, paddling, climbing and backcountry trekking, along with newer ventures like pickleball and Pokémon GO. These kinds of parks “give communities new ways to connect people with natural spaces and truly build that appreciation for our biodiversity and for ecological protection,” he said. 

On paper, it makes sense. Over the last few decades, Ontario has rapidly grown, having doubled in population since 1971. That growth has increased the need for and stress on natural spaces, which offer respite for humans and wildlife in so many ways: preserving natural areas lowers stress levels for those who visit them, reduces pollution, protects biodiversity, mitigates flood risk and more. 

But the proposal also comes from a government that continues to expend waterfronts and natural spaces in favour of development and industry. There’s a laundry list of government actions that have put parks and conservation spaces under threat in recent years — everything from the Greenbelt scandal to a bevy of changes to conservation authorities that manage watersheds and public green spaces in Ontario.

The Ford government is removing land from parks to make room for development

Bill 26 is the Ford government’s second amendment to the Provincial Parks and Conservation Reserves Act in several days, picking away at the permanent protection of the lands it governs. In addition to now including two new kinds of parks, the act is also being changed to remove lands from three existing provincial parks to make room for tourism and a highway. 

The government is proposing to remove slivers of land from Grundy Lake and French River provincial parks in northern Ontario to facilitate the widening of Highway 69. It’s also planning to remove land from Wasaga Beach Provincial Park — more than 60 per cent of which is beachfront that also serves as nesting area for endangered piping plovers — and give it to the town to help boost the local economy with tourism-specific development. The bill carrying this change is being put to a final vote this week.

The Ford government insists these changes are specific in their scope and limited in their impact because, as Dowie said, the Progressive Conservatives value nature — at least, sometimes.

Around the same time Bill 26 was tabled, the Ford government also put forward a proposal to amalgamate 36 conservation authorities — agencies unique to Ontario that manage watersheds and reduce the risk of flooding — to seven, leaving unclear the state of the thousands of acres of land these unique agencies manage to minimize flood risk and boost access to nature. Though how this will all play out remains very unclear, there is a strong precedent for Ford meddling with the authorities’ power. In recent years, conservation authorities have been told to audit their lands to find surplus areas for potential development and told the environment minister can overrule their decisions to not allow development permits (or allow them, but that’s not really on brand. Remember minister’s zoning orders or MZOs?).  

Plus, the government has watered down the rules that protect wetlands and waterways in these natural spaces, and has exempted major projects, like the Ontario Place redevelopment on the Toronto waterfront, from environmental assessments.And then there was the Greenbelt scandal, an effort to forego the protection of parcels of farmland and natural spaces for development. 

‘Nature should be part of everyday life’ — but for how long?

Cumulatively, the Ford government’s approach to nature is both confusing and contradictory. It’s valuable, until it’s in the way. And it’s worth protecting as long as people’s place in it is clearly defined. Natural spaces for the sake of nature — not to mention carbon sequestration, flood mitigation and the many other ecosystem services it provides — isn’t a goal for this government. 

The proof is in the literal weeds: in the time that this government has been in office, the auditor general has found there is no clear strategy for expanding the province’s natural areas, not enough staff in place to properly protect them and very little funding allocated to enable either. 

And even when action makes sense, its execution doesn’t. On Friday, the government announced a $4.75-million investment to rebuild and upgrade Samuel de Champlain Provincial Park in Mattawa, Ont., and turn it into a “year-round destination.” The park was devastated by a June storm, trapping campers and clearing swaths of forest. 

“The storm was one of the most severe events Ontario Parks has ever faced,” Environment Minister Todd McCarthy said in his announcement. What he didn’t say was that scientists predict such intense storms will increase in frequency due to global warming fuelled by the burning of fossil fuels. Rebuilding the park is good, but rebuilding it by prioritizing tourism over the climate resilience of such natural areas means they won’t last.

Bill 26 may be designed with good intentions, and Dowie certainly said all the right things at committee. “It will help ensure that access to nature is not to be determined by persons, postal code or income, but by the shared belief that nature should be reachable, welcome and meaningful, in effect democratic,” he told his colleagues. “Nature should be part of everyday life, not an occasional privilege, not one controlled by private landowners all the time, but truly a regular experience.” 

No one would disagree — including beachgoers at what used to be Wasaga Beach Provincial Park. But even if the Ford government facilitates the creation of new urban and adventure parks and fixes up damaged ones, their success depends on the protections that are offered to every park in the province. And when it comes to using the power of the law to ensure nature’s protection, the Ford government has proved more adept at bulldozing through it. 

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Splashed across the website of nearly every conservation authority in Ontario is a warning about low water levels. 

For nearly 80 years, the provincial agencies have been tasked with protecting public health and safety related to the province’s watersheds. That means safeguarding local drinking water sources and working to reduce the risks from natural hazards like flooding, erosion and drought. As Ontario’s population has grown, they have also been responsible for regulating development to minimize those risks, issuing permits only to those who pay attention to sustainable construction and growth.

Over the last six years, the Doug Ford government has passed four bills that have drastically changed the rules governing the 36 conservation authorities’ ability to do this job — all to speed up development. Those changes have included reducing conservation authorities’ influence over development, weakening their ability to protect water quality and wetlands and having their decisions be overruled by the overseeing minister.

Each change has come with an argument of efficiency, and since then, nearly all conservation authorities have publicly reported permits are being reviewed faster. Still, some 19 months after the last set of changes was imposed, the government has delivered yet another watershed change: it is proposing to consolidate 36 agencies into seven.

On Oct. 31, Environment Minister Todd McCarthy said individual conservation authorities were “operating largely on their own, with fragmented and outdated data systems and a patchwork of standards and service delivery.” This, he said, had led to “unpredictable and inconsistent turnaround times” for development permit approvals. 

“This is holding back Ontario,” he said.

“Obviously, there’s a fair bit of whiplash or scar tissue, pick your metaphor,” one conservation authority official from northern Ontario said. The Narwhal spoke with 12 people at 12 authorities for this story, many of whom asked to keep their names confidential for fear of retribution from the government. 

According to most of the sources, the threat to consolidate conservation authorities has been “the worst-kept secret” for a long time. It’s been talked about since this government took office, especially as Ford has previously moved to consolidate health care, and is rumoured to be planning the same for school boards. The consistent emphasis on efficiency and rapid development has kept conservation authorities in the crosshairs, as they strived to meet the government pressures without losing focus on their mandate to preserve Ontario’s watersheds and protect the public.

Currently, 26 out of 36 conservation authorities have staff closely monitoring worryingly low water levels in rivers and lakes across the province, with some declaring near-drought conditions brought on by a lack of rain. They’re doing this while they also grapple with the impacts of consolidation.

Consolidation of conservation authorities would be ‘a drastic shift’ that may ‘slow approvals, create confusion’

Despite assurances from McCarthy that they will all still be able to do this core job, there is deep skepticism among conservation authorities based on a historically fraught relationship and a litany of recent Progressive Conservative policies that have endangered Ontario’s water, forests and land. In 2023, two watchdog reports on the Greenbelt scandal found the Ford government had prioritized developer requests over environmental and technical considerations.

“The government is right to want a conservation authority system that is more consistent, transparent and efficient, especially when it comes to supporting housing and economic growth,” Jonathan Scott, a councillor for the town of Bradford West Gwillimbury and chair of the Nottawasaga Valley Conservation Authority board, told The Narwhal. “There may be room for targeted, sensible consolidation in Ontario’s conservation system, but moving from 36 authorities to just seven would be a drastic shift.” 

Scott said the local environmental expertise in each individual authority is essential. “A merger of that scale could create a larger, more distant bureaucracy that is less responsive to local municipalities, developers and farmers — exactly the people who need timely service and value having a local municipal official or trusted member of staff they can call directly,” he said.

“Losing that connection could slow approvals, create confusion and ultimately have the opposite effect of what the government intends.”

The government’s proposal to consolidate conservation authorities has been posted on the Environmental Registry of Ontario for public feedback until Dec. 22. It includes three parts: create a central agency to manage conservation authorities, consult on the boundaries and governance structures of the newly proposed seven regional agencies and then create said agencies by spring 2026. Each proposal has sparked several concerns for conservation authority staff who are in the process of consulting with their municipalities and partners. 

As has been the case since June 2024, no one from the Ontario Ministry of Environment responded to questions from The Narwhal.

Consolidating conservation authorities means overseeing much larger and more complicated watersheds

Ford has been consistently touting the need for “made-in-Ontario” solutions to the province’s issues: conservation authorities are an example of just that. They were created by a Progressive Conservative government in 1946 in response to deforestation. They were strengthened to prevent repeats of the extreme flooding caused by Hurricane Hazel in 1954. While they were tasked with acquiring land for conservation and recreation, their main job has always been monitoring waterways for potential deadly floods, including by regulating development near waterways and wetlands, in flood plains and on Great Lakes shorelines. 

Today, all but five of the 36 conservation authorities are in heavily developed southern Ontario. 

Each authority was created to manage its own watershed, an area of land that drains all the streams and rainfall into a lake, bay or river. The government’s proposal to create seven conservation authorities is based only on the Great Lakes watersheds: Lake Erie, Lake Huron-Superior, Lake Ontario, divided into western, central and eastern and the St. Lawrence River. 

“It’s not a reduction; it’s a consolidation and an amalgamation, which means that all of the communities currently served by conservation authorities will continue to be served by conservation authorities,” Minister McCarthy said on Oct. 31. He repeatedly promised there will be no layoffs in this new structure, but managers will be redeployed as frontline staff.

Conservation authorities have consolidated before. The Toronto and Region Conservation Authority was once four authorities, merged in 1957 to better manage a larger floodplain. Conservation Sudbury and Conservation Halton are both the result of similar mergers. 

Almost all of these consolidations were local decisions made by municipal governments based on specific watershed or development concerns. Earlier this year, municipalities dismissed the idea of merging the Nottawasaga Valley Conservation Authority with Lake Simcoe Region Conservation Authority, saying it would create more costs and less localized service. 

“Geography has always dictated policy,” an eastern Ontario official said. “I’m not sure that’s what’s happening now.”

Every authority oversees a different kind of environment, even if they seem nearby on a map. Water moves differently through varying landscapes and development rates, and the potential effects of flooding on the environment also vary based on geography.

Take the proposed Huron-Superior conservation authority. It would bring together seven authorities spanning roughly 1,400 kilometres and 78 municipalities from Thunder Bay, on Lake Superior through Bruce, Grey and Dufferin Counties, Simcoe County, York Region, Kawartha Lakes and Durham Region. The natural systems that feed Lake Huron, Lake Simcoe and Georgian Bay differ significantly from those along the north shore of Lake Superior. Each has distinct geology, land use and flood-risk patterns.

“It’s no joke to say that large of a region is roughly the size of Switzerland, with very different conditions and needs,” Scott said. “The costs of integrating governance, technology and operations across such a vast area could easily outweigh any savings, while adding complexity and distance.”

Carl Jorgensen, general manager of Conservation Sudbury, said that in northern Ontario, conservation authorities are far from each other. That makes sharing resources extremely challenging.

“The work we do is very localized,” he said. “The government has provided so little so far on how this is actually going to be implemented; it’s really hard to figure out how these new regional conservation authorities will work.”

“But assuming local offices remain, with staff who can support and perform that frontline work efficiently, there’s no advantage to reducing 36 to seven.”

McCarthy insists that not much will change. “Conservation authorities will continue to deliver the programs and the services that they deliver today,” he said on Oct. 31. 

“Their mandate is not changing. The areas served by conservation authorities are not changing. Their funding is not changing. In fact, they will be better equipped than ever before to meet the changing needs of our communities.”

Conservation authority consolidation threatens their ‘localized approach, localized expertise’

Conservation authorities are governed by provincial law but they are created, funded and managed by municipal governments. Local elected municipal officials sit on the boards to oversee their work and budgets, the majority of which is paid by municipal taxes. Sometimes, municipalities send money to more than one authority because watershed boundaries differ from city or town limits.

“We’re not created equal,” one official from central Ontario told The Narwhal. Larger authorities have more money and more staff. “The system can be kind of dysfunctional and needs a shakeup, but the right kind of shakeup that gives all of us the resources we need to do the important work we do.”

Angela Coleman, executive director of Conservation Ontario, told The Narwhal she’s concerned that consolidation could alter longstanding relationships, something she hopes the advocacy organization can share during the consultation process. 

“One of the main drivers that we’re hearing is that municipalities provide funding through their levies, and because of that, representation and decision-making on conservation authority boards must be carefully structured to reflect those financial contributions,” she said.

There is little in the government’s proposal about what the governing boards of amalgamated conservation authorities would look like. But those doing math in their heads are worried about the creation of extremely large boards made up of twice the number of municipal officials currently appointed. Karen Nesbitt, policy director for the Association of Municipalities Ontario, told The Narwhal this would effectively “weaken local municipal leaders’ voice, leading to a major loss of local control over conservation and environmental protection in communities.” 

In an email to The Narwhal, Nesbitt said there is general support for streamlining and improving services. “However, we are seriously concerned about how this is being carried out,” she said. “The government is making major changes, but it is not providing any new, ongoing provincial funding to run conservation authorities effectively. Worse, this funding gap is being made harder to manage because the province is taking these steps simultaneously.”

Staff also worry about a reduced level of on-the-ground services. “We are the last vestiges of the Ontario Ministry of Environment,” an official from western Ontario said. “We’re the only ones still on the ground, accountable to our communities and serving them with science-based work. After consolidation, I don’t know how we can keep doing that.”

A new provincial agency will centralize decision-making and oversight over conservation authorities

The consolidation will come via the Ontario Provincial Conservation Agency, a new government organization that will “provide centralized leadership, efficient governance, strategic direction and oversight of Ontario’s conservation authorities.”

That includes helping to “streamline and standardize service delivery” and ensure the “consistent application of provincial standards” for flood risk assessment and management. The agency will also help update floodplain mapping and dam infrastructure and develop a “single, digital permitting platform.” 

But while the goals of the agency make sense on paper, conservation authority staff are questioning why consolidation is needed in addition to that. Many already collaborate extensively through shared programs, technical partnerships and joint projects, especially in remote and rural Ontario, where resources are limited. 

“If it were only about efficiency, mandate what hardware and software we should use, give us the money for it, impose certain standards on this and be done with it,” an eastern Ontario authority official said. “But this goes so much further than that. It’s not about efficiency; it’s about removing power from the communities and imposing control from above.” 

“There is no equivalent model in Ontario where people are being told they have to pay for a provincial agency to oversee them,” the official continued. “It’s bizarre … good technology can’t make up for bad governance.” 

Scott agreed. “If governance becomes more centralized under a provincial agency while local boards lose control, we could end up with a system where municipal dollars are being spent under provincial direction without municipal oversight,” he said. “That would be a fundamental change to how Ontario’s watershed management system has operated for nearly eighty years — and not, in my view, a change for the better.”

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