November 23, 2025
The Ontario government of Premier Doug Ford’s disregard for the environment is well known. It has been described as possessing the worst environmental record of any Ontario government of the modern (post Second World War) era.
Regulatory and policy frameworks around industrial water pollution, endangered species, mining, environmental assessment, hazardous and municipal waste management, and land-use planning, including a notorious attempt to remove lands from the GTHA Greenbelt, have been dismantled or ‘streamlined’ to the point of meaninglessness.
Bill 5, the Protect Ontario by Unleashing our Economy Act, adopted parallel to the federal government’s Bill C-5 – Building Canada Act, set a wider framework for any remaining rules to be waived at the discretion of the provincial cabinet. This has been accompanied by the systemic removal of requirements for transparency, accountability and public input into decision-making, including the downgrading of the status of the province’s office of the Environmental Commissioner.
Given all of this, it might be asked what remains to be undone. Yet the past few weeks have seen new chain of announcements and legislation directed at what remains of the province’s framework for environmental protection. Two key focal points have been climate change; and water protection in rural areas.
Abandoning Climate Change
On climate there is an explicit abandonment of the province’s climate change targets, buried on the last page of the government’s fall 2025 economic statement. That move followed on from an ECO/Auditor General report documenting the province’s dismal performance on implementing its own Climate Plan and reducing GHG emissions.
The government’s move came as the evidence of the impacts of a changing climate have become more and more apparent. Wildfire smoke has become a regular feature of summers in southern Ontario cities, prompting air quality alerts, something not seen since the phase-out of coal-fired electricity a decade ago. Having lived off the benefits of that initiative by previous governments, and the impacts of the pandemic, the province’s GHG emissions are now rising, particularly in the electricity sector, as reliance on gas-fired generation has more than quadrupled.
The province’s actions have not been limited to its own goals and standards. It is also now seeking to further disable or block efforts around the environment and climate change at the local level. The province’s tendency to reach into local matters is well-established around local governance and land-use planning. Bill 17, adopted in June, contained provisions that seemed designed to block local Green Building standards. Then the province abruptly repealed the City of Toronto’s Green Roof bylaw. Complaints from the development industry about the up-front costs of higher building standards, while ignoring climate and long-term operating cost benefits, would seem the obvious motives.
Endangering Drinking Water Protection
On water, Bill 56, the omnibus Building a More Competitive Economy Act, adopted in October, weakened the already feeble source water protection regime that flowed from the report of the public inquiry into the May 2000 Walkerton drinking water disaster. The province is also proposing to move on-farm sewage treatment systems for housing for agricultural workers, to what is effectively a self-regulatory regime. Small, private sewage and water systems of this kind were identified as an area of high risk to drinking water safety by the same Inquiry.
These measures have been accompanied by a proposal to consolidate province’s 38 conservation authorities, who play central roles in source water protection, flood control, and watershed management, into 7 larger entities. The move is widely seen as an effort to further marginalize the roles of the authorities in the planning process, and to break their connections to specific watersheds and local governments.
What's Next?
The Ford government has nearly 4 years left in the mandate it won in February. Its next ‘red tape’ cutting moves are far from clear. A recognition that climate change and other environmental problems are real, present serious threats to the health, safety and well-being of Ontarians, and require substantial attention does seem a remote possibility.
With no signs of concern or restraint with the PC government and legislative caucus itself, there seem few limitations on the scope of provincial action. Aggressive moves in support of the mining industry, around, for example, the ‘ring of fire’ mining play, may prompt further constitutional challenges from Indigenous Peoples.
Charter of Rights and Freedoms-based litigation has achieved some successes, such as the challenge to bike lane removals in Toronto. It has been suggested that one of the motives for the formal abandonment of climate targets was to undermine the ongoing Charter challenge to the government’s failure to act on climate change. But Charter-based litigation is complex, and even successful results are at risk of being overridden via the Charter’s s.33 “notwithstanding” clause, something the Ford government has shown a willingness to do.
Ottawa's Role - Constraint or Enabler?
The final potential constraint on the province’s actions is Ottawa. The federal government does hold constitutionally-based potential legislative vetos over projects where specific federal approvals are required, such as under the Fisheries Act regarding the harmful alteration or destruction of fish habitat, the Species at Risk Act with respect to endangered species, the Navigation Protection Act in relation to navigable waters, and the Canadian Nuclear Safety and Control Act regarding nuclear energy projects. The federal government has also contributed considerable financing to projects prioritized by the Ford government in the auto, steel, mining and nuclear sectors.
The Trudeau government initially challenged the Ford government over its behaviour on climate change and other environmental issues. However, in the aftermath of the Ford government’s victory in the 2022 provincial election, it has, at best, turned a blind eye to Ontario’s actions.
Despite growing GHG emissions from the electricity sector, Ottawa re-wrote its proposed Clean Electricity Regulations to facilitate adding more carbon-intensive gas-fired generation to Ontario’s electricity system. The federal government has also stepped back from examining the environmental consequences, including those clearly falling within federal jurisdiction, of the Ford government’s increasingly grandiose infrastructure projects, like Highway 413, and the Bradford Bypass.
Instead, Ottawa has, at times, gone out of its way to enable the Ford government’s agenda. The proposed new-build nuclear reactors at the Darlington site - projects that, if anything, demand greater, not less scrutiny - have been designated as potential Projects of National Interest for fast-track approval purposes under Bill C-5, and provided with another $2 billion in federal support. The province’s abandonment of its GHG emission targets has been interpreted by some as a response to the signals coming from Ottawa around its own climate commitments.
The path forward from here is at best unclear. The culminating effects of the province’s actions around the impacts of climate change, drinking water safety, industrial pollution, land-use planning, along with rising electricity rates flowing from its nuclear-focused electricity plans, may yet translate into significant political costs. But by then, for some, it may be too late.