This opinion was written by Brodie Ramin and was published in the Globe & Mail on December 20, 2025. Brodie Ramin is a physician, author and assistant professor at the University of Ottawa. His latest book is Written in Blood: Lessons on Prevention from a Risky World.
A woman shovels snow from around her car following a winter storm in Montreal in 2017. Winter events now routinely cause more than $100-million in insured damage per storm.
We are treating winter storms like unexpected guests instead of guaranteed arrivals, Brodie Ramin writes
We live in the north but still act surprised when it snows. Every year Canadians shake their heads in dismay as our infrastructure collapses under the pressure of our pounding winters. The ice storm of April, 2023, knocked out power for 1.3 million customers in Ontario and Quebec. Roads froze, trees snapped under the weight of ice, and entire communities were plunged into darkness for days. Hospitals, shelters and warming centres were overwhelmed.
This past February, a severe mid-winter thaw flooded homes and overwhelmed drainage systems, inflicting more than $260-million in insured damage across Ontario, Quebec and the Atlantic provinces. A month later, an ice storm left more than 300,000 Ontario homes without electricity, while hundreds of thousands more across central and Eastern Canada faced rolling outages.
These are not anomalies; they are repeated tests of our readiness. And we keep failing.
Many disasters don’t stem from unpredictable chaos, but from repeated, preventable failure. James Reason called this the
Swiss cheese model of disaster: When weaknesses in different layers of a system line up, a single threat can trigger cascading collapse.
Canadian infrastructure is that Swiss cheese. Aging power lines, vulnerable trees, brittle building envelopes, under-resourced shelters, overwhelmed first responders: Each is a weakness in our defences. When freezing rain or deep cold strikes, the gaps align: Power is lost, people freeze and preventable tragedies unfold. The 2023 blackout alone caused multiple deaths, including from carbon monoxide poisoning, as residents turned to unsafe heating methods.
The ice storm was another reminder that the era of climate calm is over. Our weather is becoming more volatile, and the infrastructure built for yesterday’s winters can no longer carry tomorrow’s loads. Municipalities like Montreal and Toronto struggle with outdated grids and strained social services. In Calgary and Winnipeg, recent cold snaps revealed heating failures in aging apartments and gaps in transit resilience. At the same time, the push for the electrification of transport and heating infrastructure is pushing up demand for electricity.
In a country that prides itself on public order, universal health care and civic planning, the reality is bleak: We are treating winter storms like unexpected guests instead of guaranteed arrivals. And the most vulnerable – seniors, low-income residents, those without housing – are hit hardest every time.
If this sounds like a systems failure, that’s because it is. But solutions exist, if we’re willing to learn from other sectors.
In aviation, nuclear energy, and air traffic control – industries that are categorized as high-reliability organizations (HROs) – risk is constant and failure can be catastrophic. These industries don’t avoid accidents because they’re lucky; they avoid them because they plan like they’re unlucky. They never forget to be afraid, maintaining a continual state of alertness, humility and redundancy. They assume things will go wrong, and build in layers of defence to catch errors before they cascade.
Rather than scrambling to respond after disaster hits, a prevention-focused Canada would act in advance to reinforce critical systems. That means upgrading our power infrastructure and burying vulnerable electrical lines where feasible. It means retrofitting older housing stock with better insulation, energy-efficient windows, and improved ventilation. Municipalities must expand tree-trimming programs to protect power lines and invest in weather-hardened grid technologies. Emergency shelters should be equipped with scalable heating systems and reliable backup power sources. And just as importantly, we must train emergency response teams not only to act when crisis strikes, but to anticipate where and when failures are most likely to occur.
This is more than disaster response. It is public health, social equity and good governance.
The price of inaction is mounting. Winter events now routinely cause more than $100-million in insured damage per storm. And that doesn’t include the unquantifiable costs: missed work, mental-health tolls, respiratory illness from cold exposure and the erosion of public trust. Pro-active investment saves money, with yields estimated at $13 to $15 for every dollar invested in climate adaptation.
Like any chronic condition, systemic fragility doesn’t resolve on its own. Ignoring the wear and tear on Canada’s infrastructure is like ignoring chest pain in a patient with heart disease. As a prevention-focused physician, I see this pattern everywhere: We respond to failure, rather than prevent it. But vigilance is a practice, not a one-time fix. If this winter feels harsh, it’s not because we were unlucky. It’s because we failed to build for it.
The ice storm was another reminder that the era of climate calm is over. Our weather is becoming more volatile, and the infrastructure built for yesterday’s winters can no longer carry tomorrow’s loads.
This article was written by Adam Radwanski and was published in the Globe & Mail on December 20, 2025.
Minister of Energy and Natural Resources Tim Hodgson arrives for a meeting of the federal cabinet in West Block on Parliament Hill in Ottawa.
Tim Hodgson is not much for pleasantries. The Bay Street-minded minister is keen to work with business to get pitches ready for prime time. If he offends some sensibilities in Ottawa along the way, so be it
For companies that arrive cap-in-hand to pitch energy or mining projects that might meet Canada’s moment of economic reckoning, a sit-down with the most influential member of Prime Minister Mark Carney’s cabinet can be a novel and jarring experience. Tim Hodgson isn’t much for the pleasantries that usually kick off such meetings, sometimes at length, with other ministers. Nor does he make broadly enthusiastic if non-committal noises about whatever is on the table, being gentle in discussing qualms or potential roadblocks, or spending much time talking about where the project might fit into the wider policy landscape.
Instead, Mr. Hodgson – who this year went straight from a long career as an investment banker to being the country’s Energy and Natural Resources Minister – tends to almost immediately go deeply and unsparingly into the proposal’s financial fundamentals.
If he thinks proponents are wasting their time, he doesn’t hold back letting them know. If he thinks there’s strong potential, he’ll ask tough questions and poke holes if there are any. He can sometimes lecture, even if his visitors might have more experience than he does with the type of project being discussed.
Enough people found Mr. Hodgson’s bedside manner off-putting, in his first months on the job, that his staff encouraged him to soften it.
But to others, including some who have endured his bluntness, it’s a major virtue – forcing companies to up their game when seeking federal support, giving them a clearer sense than previously of how to get across the finish line, and helping the government figure out which projects really deserve to be fast tracked for permitting or public financing.
And in the eyes of admirers – including, by all accounts, a Prime Minister who counts him as his closest friend and confidant in cabinet – it’s one of the ways that Mr. Hodgson is necessarily reorienting Ottawa’s relationship with resource-based industries on which it’s largely pinning Canada’s hopes for greater economic sovereignty in the face of U.S. aggression.
To get a sense of what that involves, The Globe and Mail interviewed more than 20 people who have interacted with Mr. Hodgson during his seven months in office – including industry leaders, lobbyists and government officials – as well as Mr. Hodgson himself.
What emerged, through descriptions of his dealings with industry and within government, is a picture of a minister who is highly unusual in ways that perfectly align with Mr. Carney’s economic ambitions, yet could pose some risk to them.
Veteran executives who enter government tend to talk about running it more like the private sector, but Mr. Hodgson is proving better positioned and more determined to do so than most.
Less interested than colleagues in Liberal orthodoxy or policy debates, he’s squarely focused on reaching investment deals – including for criticalmineral extraction, oil-and-gas infrastructure and carbon-capture technology that is billed as making it sustainable, and to strengthen electricity grids – at a pace to which Ottawa is unaccustomed.
He’s more accessible than his predecessors to industry and spends less time on the minutiae of his department. He remains so inclined toward Bay Street language that ministry officials half-joke they need to send him term sheets, not briefing notes.
Yet despite his private-sector track record – highlighted by a Goldman Sachs tenure in which he became chief executive officer of its Canadian operations, a stint as managing partner of private investment firm Alignvest Management Corp. and an array of recent board memberships that included chairing Ontario’s Hydro One Ltd. – he has entered Ottawa with limited knowledge of its workings.
His public-sector experience was limited to less than two years as an adviser to Mr. Carney at the Bank of Canada, which is not closely connected to the rest of government. His political experience was virtually non-existent, and he had no known history with the party he is now serving. He’s known among friends to be deeply patriotic, informed by continuing his family’s history of military service before entering business and by charitable work for veterans, but few previously imagined him seeking office.
“I was shocked,” said Jim Leech, the former Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan CEO who is close to Mr. Hodgson. Mr. Leech thought it likelier that Mr. Hodgson, whom he considers a somewhat fiscally conservative political centrist like himself, would ease into retirement, before a sense of duty and the chance to serve with his friend Mr. Carney beckoned.
Already, Mr. Hodgson has encountered potential pitfalls. Among them: running afoul of other Liberals as he steers a de-prioritization of climate goals in favour of re-embracing the oil-and-gas sector, and misaligning the need for speed with getting First Nations support that could make or break projects he’s pursuing.
So, authoritative though he is poring over capital stacks with would-be investors, Mr. Hodgson has been on a steep learning curve when it comes to the demands of public life, and what being a chief dealmaker on the government’s side of the table really entails.
Mr. Hodgson is not especially inclined toward reflecting on that personal journey thus far, at least for public consumption.
Asked at the start of an interview in his office what lessons he’s taken from his first months in Ottawa, he replied with more of an explanation of a governing philosophy that he (like Mr. Carney) has seemingly adopted from the get-go.
“I think what I’ve learned is actually not that different than business: You need to be pragmatic,” he said. “When you come in and you sort of have rigid thinking or ideological rigidness, you miss opportunities to get things done.”
Behind the scenes, however, he has indeed been attempting to improve as he goes along.
That applies, most obviously, to public performance – making the case for the government’s agenda and answering critical questions.
Despite a commanding boardroom presence, he’s not a natural behind a microphone. Delivering introductory speeches to business audiences shortly after entering cabinet, he read from prepared texts in a monotone, occasionally stumbling over words.
He also does not particularly care for performing political theatre. He surprised himself by enjoying knocking on doors in his Greater Toronto Area riding during this year’s election campaign, he said, where largely first-generation Canadians “fully understand this is the greatest country in the world” and counterbalanced the “everything’s broken” grumbling he was hearing in elite circles. But he is sourer on Ottawa’s daily cut-and-thrust.
“Look, I have colleagues who relish the sport of Question Period,” he said. “I find it somewhat disingenuous, and I guess a necessary part of democracy.”
He can also get frustrated by media coverage. Discussing Indigenous relations, he recalled going to a First Nations summit where he felt that the vast majority of chiefs were supportive of his pitch about shared economic prosperity, or open-minded, only for journalists to seek out the small minority who were hostile to it.
Nevertheless, he appeared to recognize from the outset that this was an area of vulnerability and, according to staff, proved more willing than some rookie ministers to undertake media training.
The results have been imperfect. One of the worst moments of his fledgling political career came weeks ago, when he was asked by a TV interviewer about ensuring Indigenous consultation around a potential oil pipeline and replied that “It’s called Zoom.” (He apologized the next day.)
But such flashes of impatience have been less common than might be expected of someone known for them in private. And he has started to make speaking publicly look a little less like a chore.
In the interview for this story, he discussed aspects of his job in some detail without talking himself into trouble. And he managed a dash of folksiness when he brought up how childhood experiences in an Armed Forces family across Canada – in logging and mill towns, in Nova Scotia with kids who’d miss school to work on lobster boats, at a vocational high school where friends went on to oil rigs – help make his current job feel visceral.
A common hope, among allies, is that he’s landing in a sweet spot where he can speak political language well enough to get by while maintaining some plain-spoken outsider appeal.
Corey Hogan, a Liberal MP from Calgary who is a parliamentary secretary to Mr. Hodgson, pointed to a recent parliamentary committee appearance where Mr. Hodgson responded to Conservative badgering with the air of someone accustomed to doing business in the real world, and bemused by his inquisitors’ disinterest in hearing actual answers to their questions.
“His power is he acts like a normal executive in these situations,” Mr. Hogan said.
The rookie minister’s executive instincts were on display, in a different way, as he began his new job.
Government officials who interacted with him immediately following his swearing-in last May were struck by his negativity toward Ottawa’s bureaucratic and political culture – a mindset, common on Bay Street, that the capital was beset by laziness and incompetence.
The impression they got, not entirely different from one conveyed by Mr. Carney, was that Mr. Hodgson viewed himself as an adult who had arrived to cut the nonsense.
At the same time, he also understandably had limited knowledge of government processes or his departmental responsibilities. Before long, he had to lean on some of the same civil servants and political staff to show him the ropes, and learn the levers at his disposal and the complexities of balancing different interests.
There have been some tells, as to recognizing the starting point wasn’t quite as bad as he thought.
One of them has been in how he’s sought to reduce federal-provincial overlap in approving energy and resource investments, and deliver on Mr. Carney’s “one project, one review” campaign promise.
As he boasted in the interview, Ottawa has recently moved in that direction by reaching co-operation agreements with provinces through provisions in the existing Impact Assessment Act – an effort that began under his predecessor, Jonathan Wilkinson. Meanwhile, controversial powers to override normal permitting processes under the Building Canada Act, which the government hurriedly pushed through shortly after Mr. Carney and Mr. Hodgson took over, have yet to be used.
But if his views have softened, he hasn’t abandoned them entirely. Asked whether government is as broken as he thought coming in, Mr. Hodgson homed in on what he sees as an abundance of caution mismatched with the hinge moment that Mr. Carney frequently invokes.
“My observation of government is that the default modality is that not making a decision is less risky than making a decision,” he said, suggesting it’s easier to buy time while waiting for more information.
“We don’t have that luxury. We need to make decisions. We need to retool our economy … And that requires a level of boldness and ambition in government that hasn’t really been there.”
Toward that end, he has (more than many incoming ministers) jettisoned most of the policy staff he inherited from Mr. Wilkinson, who was known as a policy wonk committed to carefully finding the right balance between economic and environmental goals. To replace them, he’s largely sought out young staff who, like him, have more financial than political experience.
Among bureaucrats, meanwhile, word has spread that Mr. Hodgson expects advice sent to him to be quick and to the point, with as many numbers and as little word salad as possible.
That is, if those bureaucrats are engaging with him at all. There are corners of his ministry, including those dedicated primarily to reckoning with aspects the long-term transition to low-carbon energy, that have yet to have much contact with him.
That lack of access, which has prompted some grumbling internally, has not been a complaint from industry – at least sectors such as oil and gas, nuclear, mining and forestry, in which Mr. Carney’s government sees opportunity to leverage existing strengths.
Their members have found Mr. Hodgson as accessible, if brisk, as any minister they can recall.
“He’s clear, he’s blunt and he’s up-front – which is refreshing,” said Explorers and Producers Association of Canada president Tristan Goodman, whose organization represents fossil-fuel extractors outside the oil sands.
How Mr. Hodgson chooses to spend his time points toward his emphasis on the nitty-gritty of reaching specific deals rather than obsessing over broader policy frameworks. Though leveraging his position to nail down investments is also likely a more complex undertaking than when he was in the private sector.
It’s not as though Mr. Hodgson can make snap permitting decisions, many of which don’t even rest with his ministry, when at the table across from project proponents.
And while his meetings tend to focus heavily on the financials, he’s limited in what he can directly do there, too.
The government’s largest vehicles for loans, equity stakes, offtake agreements and other forms of concessional financing to get projects off the ground – including the Canada Growth Fund, Canada Infrastructure Bank and new Indigenous Loan Guarantee Corp. – are all supposed to function with high degrees of independence.
Now in the mix, too, is the Major Projects Office established by Mr. Carney and run out of Calgary by former energy executive Dawn Farrell, which is meant to provide some regulatory and financial co-ordination.
Mr. Hodgson does have some dollars at his disposal, including a $2-billion critical minerals fund in last month’s budget. And there are plenty of projects, particularly in that sector, that are too small to go to the MPO but could collectively add up.
But there are other ways he wields his influence, some formal and some less so.
Among his responsibilities is chairing the Build Canada committee, which Mr. Carney established and which Mr. Hodgson described as cabinet’s main economic committee, responsible for trying to spur $500-billion of investment across sectors.
Among its focuses, he said, is “de-pancaking” regulations (reducing overlap across departments), plus being “a fulcrum for all the different financing tools and a convening forum.”
Build Canada oversees the MPO, and Mr. Hodgson sits on the MPO’s investment committee, so he has some sway over what gets referred there and how the office gets rolling.
His job is partly to serve as the government’s eyes and ears for what potential investments, big and small, are out there. And then there is how he puts his business acumen to use in determining which possibilities are credible – particularly important in mining, as a wide range of companies seek to capitalize on the frenzy to counter China’s critical-minerals dominance.
As for how he tries to make those assessments, and work with proponents to get pitches ready for prime time, Mr. Hodgson invoked the five factors in the Building Canada Act for designating large projects to be in the national interest, which may be instructive of how hard the government tries to advance smaller projects as well.
Boiled down, those criteria include strengthening Canada’s sovereignty, providing economic benefit, having a high likelihood of success, and advancing Indigenous interests and climate-change objectives.
He gave the example of a pair of projects. If “a great proponent” had a projected internal rate of return of 20 per cent, it would seem a slam dunk. If another pencilled out to only an 8 per cent IRR, it might not totally align with the likelihood of success metric. But if it were in something such as rare earths, it could be enough of a strategic priority to try to advance anyway.
In that case, he might try to help figure out which financial tools at the government’s disposal – low-interest lending, equity stakes, money for surrounding infrastructure – might get the rate of return to a more attractive level.
Those conversations would happen with the proponent and within Mr. Hodgson’s department. “I’m kind of like: Hey, how have you thought about it? How have you priced this out? Have you thought through the five criteria and what are the tools to help us get there? And do we think if we’ve referred this to the MPO, they’d be supportive?”
What Mr. Hodgson didn’t say, but others in government observed, is that he will sometimes then try to wield soft power around Ottawa, signalling to other departments and agencies that he thinks targeted dollars could get a desirable project over the line. The same can go for the permitting side. The idea is to get everything moving quickly in lockstep, not slowly in piecemeal fashion.
Such efforts are taken seriously by other ministers and officials, both because of Mr. Hodgson’s expertise and because they know how much Mr. Carney has entrusted him.
But his perceived influence on the government’s agenda could also prove a double-edged sword – including with members of the governing party to which he is a newcomer.
Initially, Mr. Hodgson did not seem terribly concerned about endearing himself to fellow Liberal caucus members, whom he made little secret of considering fortunate to have gotten or kept their jobs by virtue of Mr. Carney’s leadership. He has since worked harder to build bridges, making himself accessible and proving willing to delegate to his parliamentary secretaries, Mr. Hogan and Quebec MP Claude Guay.
There is nevertheless a large fault line running between him and the many Liberal MPs for whom an ambitious agenda to combat climate change is an article of faith.
Mr. Hodgson was not primarily responsible for last month’s memorandum of understanding with Alberta, in which Ottawa agreed to drop or soften several environmental policies put in place under former prime minister Justin Trudeau in return for strengthening industrial carbon pricing, and opened the door to a new oil pipeline. Although he was involved, the negotiations were led by top officials from the Prime Minister’s Office and Privy Council Office.
But while he is the point person for the government’s pursuit of investments in conventional energy, he has not shown quite the same level of enthusiasm for renewable power, and even his admirers in government concede he’s at the leastgreen end of the Liberal spectrum.
One of the corporate boards he sat on was that of oil-sands producer MEG Energy Corp. And asked how he sees Canada’s place in the global energy transition, he spoke almost entirely about fossil fuels, including through advancing (still notional) carbon-capture projects in the oil sands and exporting natural gas as a transition fuel.
As for his message to climate-concerned colleagues, he invoked broader benefits. “If we produce the cleanest, best version of those products, our allies want them,” he said.
“It’s a point of national security, and we can use that revenue to pay for our $10-a-day daycare, our new dental care program and our school lunch programs … or provincially pay for universal health care or subsidized postsecondary education. I think Canadians say, ‘Hey, we should do that.’ ”
On another point of concern for many members of the government, relations with Indigenous leaders and communities, Mr. Hodgson went further out of his way in the interview to signal it as a shared priority. Invoking success during his time chairing Hydro One in partnering with First Nations to build transmission lines, he emphasized the importance of Indigenous participation in all projects while acknowledging he’s still learning countrywide dynamics.
Still, his move-fast approach has already at times seemed an awkward fit with Indigenous leadership’s desire for extensive consultation.
On these and other potential tension points, Mr. Hodgson seemingly has Mr. Carney’s blessing and is doing his bidding. But a possibility flagged by veterans of Liberal politics is that he could become a lightning rod for caucus members reluctant to challenge their leader and wanting someone else to blame for a rightward shift.
It’s unlikely that danger is keeping Mr. Hodgson up at night. Based on all available accounts, he holds no great political ambitions, is in Ottawa because Mr. Carney asked him, and will judge himself primarily by how many deals he gets done in whatever time he has there.
It’s too early for him or anyone else to pass that judgment.
There have been initial signs of success, mostly around minerals, highlighted by investments in six mining and processing projects in Ontario and Quebec announced on the margins of a G7 summit this fall. But most of the other, larger projects referred to the MPO thus far were in the works before Mr. Carney and Mr. Hodgson took office.
By the standards they’ve set for themselves, the real test will be how much, and how quickly, the deal flow picks up in 2026 and beyond. And if the chief dealmaker offends some sensibilities along the way, so be it.
“What the Prime Minister has said, which I’ve taken to heart,” Mr. Hodgson said, “is that we need to focus on outcomes, not how we get there.”
Goal is to draw in private capital for lowcarbon projects
This article was written by the Canadian Press and was published in the Toronto Star on December 19, 2025.
The federal government says it is moving forward on a long awaited central list of investments considered to be sustainable.
The list, also known as a green taxonomy, is intended to make it clear what activities and investments fit within Canada’s climate goals and help to attract private capital to them.
The government says the Canadian Climate Institute, a government funded independent think tank, will lead the effort, working with Business Future Pathways, an investor driven group helping push corporate transition plans.
Finance Minister FrançoisPhilippe Champagne says in a statement that Canada needs to attract more private capital to build a low carbon economy, while financial markets are demanding common standards on what’s considered green or transition investments.
Official guidelines, though voluntary to use, can help add credibility to green or transition bonds and allow investors to better assess sustainable investment products.
While many countries have already moved ahead with their own green taxonomies that cover areas like renewables, construction and bioenergy, Canada’s approach has also included a more contested “transition” category that could see investments going to high emitters like oil sands projects to reduce their emissions.
Jonathan Arnold, director of sustainable finance at the Canadian Climate Institute, says in a statement that the guidelines crucially help transform emissionintensive sectors that are central to the national economy.
The Canadian Climate Institute and Business Future Pathways have been tasked with establishing a governance structure to oversee development of the taxonomy, with finalized guidelines expected for three priority sectors by the end of 2026 and another three sectors covered by the end of 2027.
The government initially asked a group of experts in 2021 to provide recommendations on a taxonomy and has made several commitments since then to move ahead.
This article was written by David Baxter and was published in the Toronto Star on December 19, 2025.
Prime Minister Mark Carney and Ontario Premier Doug Ford have signed an agreement to speed up the approval of major projects in the province under a “one project, one process, one decision” model.
This approach means that projects that would have been subject to environmental assessments at both the federal and provincial levels will now go through Ontario’s process alone when the project is located primarily within the province.
“It’s time for Canada to build big things again. And nowhere will the impact of this deal be felt more immediately than in the development of the Ring of Fire,” Ford told a Ottawa press conference Thursday.
Carney said projects will use the federal process when Ottawa has primary jurisdiction and a mixed assessment system when they fall under shared jurisdiction.
“That will make approvals more efficient, delivering major projects faster while maintaining both federal and provincial standards,” Carney said. “By working together, we will work with the same information, we will have the same timelines, and we will respect each other’s jurisdictions.”
The prime minister said in French that the federal government is negotiating similar deals with Manitoba and Prince Edward Island. Carney added he wants to get similar deals in place with every province.
The Ontario agreement also contains language that sets a deadline for the Impact Assessment Agency of Canada to complete its review of roads to planned mining projects in the Ring of Fire region of northern Ontario by June 2026.
The Ring of Fire is home to major critical mineral deposits and the provincial and federal governments see it as a major economic driver.
Saskatchewan and Manitoba hit with 20 centimetres of snow as system moves eastward
This article was written by Steve Lambert and was published in the Toronto Star on December 19, 2025.
Vehicles were stranded in snow, schools and highways were closed, and some government services were delayed as an Alberta clipper continued to move eastward across the Prairies Thursday.
The storm brought up to 20 centimetres of snow and wind gusts of up to 90 km/h in Saskatchewan and Manitoba.
Police urged motorists to avoid travelling. Sections of major highways including the TransCanada Highway in Manitoba were closed for hours as blowing snow reduced visibility and created large drifts on the roadway.
Manitoba RCMP received reports of 11 vehicle collisions and 20 stranded drivers overnight.
“There’s been no injuries. I don’t even think we have a collision between vehicles right now. It’s just all single vehicle mishaps where people are going into the ditch,” Sgt. Paul Manaigre said Thursday morning.
Saskatchewan RCMP responded to 82 reports of vehicle collisions — a number that did not include vehicles stuck in ditches. A crash involving three semitrailer trucks left one driver dead and others injured.
Schools in many areas of Manitoba were closed. It was a rare event in Winnipeg, where most schools usually remain open during storms. All school divisions in the capital opted to cancel classes for the day, as did the University of Winnipeg, the University of Manitoba and RRC Polytechnic.
Winnipeg city hall cancelled garbage and recycling collection.
The Winnipeg Regional Health Authority said it was sharply reducing home care services.
Main Street Project, a nonprofit that serves the city’s most vulnerable, said outreach vans were on the road doing checks on people living in encampments and bus shelters, and offering transportation to safe places.
Cindy Titus, interim director of development at the shelter, said extreme weather days means it’s all hands on deck.
“It’s a busy place. Lots of people coming in for support, needing warm clothing, mittens, winter clothing and stuff like that.”
Manitoba Hydro noted many power outages scattered across the province.
“But with so many closed or impassable roads (and highways), there are many areas where we can’t safely dispatch crews to make repairs until visibility and road conditions improve,” the utility posted on social media.
The snow had tapered off by midday in Winnipeg.
Environment and Climate Change Canada said the gusty winds were expected to ease in Manitoba late Thursday as the storm system moves farther east.
Manitoba Hydro said there were outages across the province, but added that it couldn’t safely dispatch repair crews because of impassable roads and poor visibility
Dispute over the future of Portlands Energy Centre
This article was written by Kate Allen and was published in the Toronto Star on December 18, 2025.
Tempers flared at city council Wednesday over the city’s biggest source of carbon pollution, the Portlands gas plant, as two councillors who had been aligned against the plant clashed over plans for its future — and over how those plans have been painted by advocates.
The conflict centred on Couns. Paula Fletcher and Dianne Saxe, who share a history of opposing the Portlands Energy Centre. The gas plant sits in Fletcher’s Ward 14, TorontoDanforth; she fought against its creation in 2006 and has voted since to phase Portlands out. Saxe, the former environmental commissioner of Ontario, has spent her career championing environmental causes, and has likewise voted to phase Portlands out.
In fact, Fletcher and Saxe collaborated in 2024 to bring a successful motion to city council asking to end gasfired electricity at Portlands by 2035.
But on Wednesday, Fletcher called a plan Saxe proposed for Portlands unworkable and a “nuisance motion,” and suggested Saxe was responsible for a “misinformation” campaign that targeted Fletcher.
Saxe rejected Fletcher’s characterization, and later told the Star her plan was “proper. I think what I’m asking for is exactly what the city should be doing.”
“I’m not going to get into a mudslinging match with my colleague,” Saxe said.
Fletcher’s objections stemmed from a twopage letter Saxe wrote last month, which Fletcher told council “created a firestorm that has not yet stopped.”
The letter, and a motion Saxe brought to the infrastructure and environment committee that encapsulated her requests, are an attempt to battle the province’s Independent Electricity System Operator, whose proposed plan to meet Toronto’s growing energy needs includes the possibility of extending reliance on Portlands. Saxe wanted to ask Toronto Hydro to come up with its own energy supply plan for the city that includes phasing out Portlands by 2035, replacing it with cleanenergy alternatives. Fletcher said Wednesday that Toronto Hydro doesn’t have jurisdiction to create such a plan; in response to questions from councillors, Toronto Hydro and city staff appeared to agree.
At a committee meeting in early December, Fletcher and three other councillors voted to refer Saxe’s plan to staff for consideration without a date to report back — a move that advocates described as the “black hole” of municipal governance, making it unlikely staff will respond. That item and two others related to the city’s climate strategy attracted a surge of interest from the public.
A day after the meeting, the Ontario Clean Air Alliance, a longrunning advocacy group, ran a post on its website with the title “Meet the four Toronto councillors who voted for more pollution,” along with a photo illustration of Fletcher and the three other committee members superimposed over a picture of smokestacks. The post claimed that they voted to “stall action on phasing out the polluting Portlands gas plant and (shift) the city to a renewable energy future.”
The post called out Fletcher specifically, calling her vote “astounding” since she “strongly opposed” construction of the gas plant in 2006, “but now isn’t willing to support a key step to see it shut down ASAP.”
In council chambers Wednesday, Fletcher held up a printout of the Ontario Clean Air Alliance post, and blamed Saxe for “a nuisance motion, a nuisance letter” that created the backlash. (In a statement to the Star, Jack Gibbons, the chair of the alliance, said that the bulletin “accurately described what happened” and called Fletcher’s claims “totally false.”)
Fletcher repeated her opposition to Portlands, calling it “the most polluting, noxious plant anywhere in the GTA, anywhere. And I want to be very clear on the record that I’ve always supported the phaseout.”
Ultimately, both Saxe and Fletcher introduced similar motions at council, which asked staff to report back on opportunities to shift to more local renewable energy sources. Both passed.
Asked if they could work together on this topic in the future since they ultimately advocated for similar positions, both councillors demurred.
That is “to be determined,” Saxe said.
“You’ll have to ask (Saxe),” Fletcher said, because since “the flak from the motion, she has not spoken out to say, `that certainly wasn’t my intention, to target four councillors.’ ”
Coun. Paula Fletcher on Wednesday called a plan Coun. Dianne Saxe proposed for Portlands unworkable and a “nuisance motion,” and suggested Saxe was responsible for a “misinformation” campaign that targeted Fletcher
This article was written by Mathieu Dion and was published in the Toronto Star on December 18, 2025.
British startup Awendio Solaris is drafting plans to invest as much as $1 billion into a solar technologies factory in Canada, though it still needs to secure power supply and financing.
The company wants to build a manufacturing facility and a research and development centre on an industrial site in the Montreal region. The operation would manufacture solar cells and assemble solar panels for North American utilities, delivering up to 2,500 megawatts of annual production capacity in its first phase, according to the firm’s website.
“It’s massive,” Awendio CEO Marc Deschamps said. “It is the equivalent of 20 Maersk containers full of panels, flatpack panels, coming out every day.”
There’s one major advantage to locating in Quebec, according to Deschamps. The province has cheap, clean power because of its vast network of hydroelectric dams. Awendio’s first phase would require about 32 megawatts of electricity from HydroQuebec, he said — the rest of the factory’s needs would be filled with solar power.
But the stateowned Quebec utility has been under pressure lately on its supply outlook, partly because of contracts it negotiated years ago to sell power to the U.S. Proposals for new industrial projects are now under more scrutiny.
A spokesperson for Quebec’s economy minister said the province is “currently analyzing the file with great interest.”
Deschamps said that Awendio’s management, two U.S. family offices and First Nations groups are financially backing the project for now, and that National Bank of Canada is putting together a consortium of funds to support it. Awendio is also seeking financial aid from governments.
There are constructive conversations occurring with officials in the federal government, according to a person familiar with the matter, speaking on condition of anonymity because the discussions are still private.
This article was written and published by the Toronto Star on December 18, 2025.
All four of Canada’s biggest oil com panies including Cenovus, Cana dian Natural Resources Ltd., Sun cor Energy Inc. and Imperial Oil Ltd. are forecasting higher output in 2026, according to guidance midpoints. Cenovus is predicting an increase of roughly 18 per cent, largely to account for its November takeover of MEG Energy Corp.
Ottawa, Ontario to cut duplicative project assessments
This article was written by Liam Casey and Allison Jones, and was published in the Toronto Star on December 18, 2025.
Ottawa and Ontario are set to finalize a deal Thursday that will reduce the regulatory burden on large projects, including the road to the Ring of Fire, The Canadian Press has learned.
Provincial and federal government sources who are not allowed to speak publicly say Ottawa has agreed to eliminate any duplicative work on its impact assessments on large projects.
A draft agreement posted on the Impact Assessment Agency of Canada’s website says the goal is to work together to implement the “One Project, One Review and One Decision” approach.
Premier Doug Ford was asked if this would be the final piece of the puzzle in order to begin building the roads to the Ring of Fire next year.
“I believe so,” he said. Webequie First Nation and Marten Falls First Nation are leading environmental assessments on three roads that would connect the provincial highway system to their communities and mining activities in the mineralrich Ring of Fire region in northern Ontario.
In a side deal on the Ring of Fire roads, the federal government has committed to completing its impact assessment on the same timeline as the province’s environmental assessment, as both First Nations say they are set to begin building the roads in 2026.
The province has also signed a deal with Aroland First Nation further south at the foot of the roads to the Ring of Fire that will see an old nearby logging road upgraded.
“This is about bringing them prosperity, bringing Ontario prosperity, making sure that we work with the communities up there,” Ford said.
Ontario Indigenous Affairs Minister Greg Rickford called the upcoming deal “good public policy” that will help the First Nations the province has partnered with to build the roads and other badly needed infrastructure in those communities.
“It need not be smothered in regulatory processes that just serve to make the development of this infrastructure and the penultimate goal of bringing the world its critical minerals longer than it should,” he said.
Energy and Mines Minister Stephen Lecce said they need to get on with building.
“I think part of this agreement that (Ford) has landed is really about securing a path to delivering the roads and ultimately delivering prosperity and more self reliance for Canada,” he said.
Prime Minister Mark Carney and Ford will sign the deal at a ceremony in Ottawa on Thursday. Carney’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
The Canadian Press learned about the details during a recent trip to the Ring of Fire region as part of a reporting project supported by the Pulitzer Centre.
Both Webequie and Marten Falls say the roads will help lift the flyin communities out of poverty, though other nearby First Nations are not on board with the plan.
A source in Ford’s office who is not allowed to speak publicly about the yettobeannounced deal says the changes will dramatically speed up big projects across the province, including roads, highways and mines.
“This is huge, not just for the Ring of Fire, but for mining in general, and building roads and highways,” the premier’s office source says. “It will be 10 times more transformational than any major project.”
A senior federal government source, who likewise was not authorized to speak publicly about the deal, says it is all about eliminating duplication. The environmental standards will remain stringent and rights and protections will be upheld, the source promises, including for the roads to the Ring of Fire.
The federal government has launched a regional assessment working group to better understand the impacts of development, but the province and Webequie and Marten Falls say it will not affect the road.
The two governments aim to work together on assessments of navigable waters, species at risk and migratory birds, all long in the federal purview.
With these deals in place, the province is no longer expected to use controversial new powers to designate the road to the Ring of Fire a special economic zone. That provision would have allowed the province to suspend provincial and municipal laws with the goal of speeding up construction of a proposed mine in the Ring of Fire.
The area is said to be replete with critical minerals, but many other First Nations are against development in the region — including the roads and the mine they would lead to.
Wyloo, the Australian mining giant, is nearing completion of its feasibility study on two proposed, connected underground mines at its Eagle’s Nest site.
Wyloo and Juno Corp., a Canadian junior mining company formed in 2019, own the vast majority of the more than 40,000 claims staked in the Ring of Fire. Two other companies, Teck Resources (which recently merged with Anglo American) and Canada Chrome Corporation, also hold a significant number of claims.
The companies say they’ve found a wide variety of critical mineral and base metal deposits, including nickel, copper, chromite, titanium, platinum, vanadium, iron and gold. They are used to make all types of batteries, stainless steel, semiconductors and computers.
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