How will new blue bin pickup sys­tem affect you?

Missed col­lec­tions and mis­in­form­a­tion res­ult in rocky start

The launch of the province's new blue box program has been bumpy, with missed pickups a nd confusing information causing headaches for residents. In this photo from Sunday, bins overflow along Randolph Road.

This article was written by Estella Ren and was published in the Toronto Star on January 9, 2026.

For the first time in over four dec­ades, Toronto’s blue bin recyc­ling pro­gram is no longer run by the city but by a new, private oper­ator.

Cir­cu­lar Mater­i­als, a non­profit foun­ded to handle recyc­ling on behalf of major brands like McDon­ald’s, Cosco and Loblaws, took over recyc­ling sys­tems in Ontario muni­cip­al­it­ies, includ­ing Toronto, on Jan. 1, con­clud­ing a three­year pro­vin­cial trans­ition marked by industry com­plaints and recyc­ling stand­ards being watered down.

A week into 2026, the launch has been bumpy, with missed pick­ups and con­fus­ing inform­a­tion caus­ing head­aches for res­id­ents.

While you can no longer call the city of Toronto at 311 to fix your blue bin prob­lems, here’s a guide on who to con­tact instead and how the new recyc­ling ser­vice pro­vider came into place.

How does the new sys­tem dif­fer from the old one?

Toronto house­holds can recycle the same mater­i­als as before, plus some new items — includ­ing black plastic con­tain­ers, hot and cold bever­age cups, frozen juice con­tain­ers, ice cream tubs, and deodor­ant and tooth­paste tubes.

Res­id­ents can con­tinue to use their cur­rent blue bins, and col­lec­tion days remain the same, except in some neigh­bour­hoods of the old city of Toronto, east and west of Yonge Street, where altern­at­ing garbage and recyc­ling weeks will change begin­ning in early Janu­ary. Affected res­id­ents should have received a notice or can con­sult the city’s 2026 col­lec­tion sched­ule.

One thing res­id­ents may miss is the city’s 311 line, which offered around­the­clock sup­port for missed pickups or dam­aged or miss­ing bins. 311 will no longer handle recyc­ling ques­tions; all calls should be dir­ec­ted to the new Cir­cu­lar Mater­i­als hot­line, 1­888­921­2686, which oper­ates only on week­days.

The non­profit said it will respond to mes­sages left out­side of busi­ness hours the next day and handle urgent calls imme­di­ately.

Toronto house­holds can recycle the same mater­i­als as before, plus some new items — includ­ing black plastic con­tain­ers and hot and cold bever­age cups

Why is the recyc­ling sys­tem being privat­ized?

In the pre­vi­ous sys­tem, more than 240 Ontario muni­cip­al­it­ies ran their own sep­ar­ate blue box pro­grams, shar­ing costs equally with so­called “stew­ards” — the man­u­fac­tur­ers, brand hold­ers, and fran­chisors respons­ible for pro­du­cing house­hold glass, plastic, metal and prin­ted paper products.

Doug Ford’s gov­ern­ment pushed for a trans­ition to an exten­ded pro­du­cer respons­ib­il­ity sys­tem in 2021 to incentiv­ize com­pan­ies to use more recyc­lable pack­aging, mak­ing the “stew­ards” fully respons­ible for the cost and admin­is­tra­tion of recyc­ling. Ford said the change would save muni­cip­al­it­ies mil­lions while divert­ing more waste from land­fills, thanks to an expan­ded list of recyc­lable mater­i­als.

However, the exe­cu­tion of the well ­inten­tioned idea has been trouble­some and cri­ti­cized as need­lessly bur­eau­cratic. The envir­on­ment min­istry gran­ted waste pro­du­cers a two­ year grace period to make “best efforts” to meet recyc­ling tar­gets before facing poten­tial fines, and delayed plans to expand blue box recyc­ling to apart­ments, con­dos, long­ term ­care and retire­ment homes by five years.

Who is Cir­cu­lar Mater­i­als?

Retail­ers that pro­duce blue bin mater­i­als do not dir­ectly man­age recyc­ling. Instead, they rely on pro­du­cer respons­ib­il­ity organ­iz­a­tions (PROs) to con­tract out recyc­ling col­lec­tion and pro­cessing on their behalf.

Cir­cu­lar Mater­i­als is one of four PROs oper­at­ing in Ontario. It also serves as the over­all admin­is­trator of recyc­ling across the province.

But Ontario’s new recyc­ling sys­tem, which allows mul­tiple com­pet­ing PROs to oper­ate, has drawn cri­ti­cism for cre­at­ing duplic­a­tion in admin­is­trat­ive and other tasks. The Retail Coun­cil of Canada has said this approach could add mil­lions to the cost of pro­cessing recyc­lables. By con­trast, provinces such as Brit­ish Columbia, Que­bec, and Alberta each oper­ate with a single PRO for their recyc­ling pro­gram.

What has happened with the sys­tem launch so far?

Over the first week­end of the new year, large swaths of Toronto saw no Green for Life Envir­on­mental (GFL) trucks arrive, des­pite res­id­ents being told to put out their bins for a spe­cial hol­i­day col­lec­tion last Fri­day or Sat­urday.

Cir­cu­lar Mater­i­als has blamed its con­tractor, GFL, for col­lec­tion fail­ures, while GFL cus­tomer ser­vice staff have sug­ges­ted they were given late notice about spe­cial hol­i­day pickups. Cir­cu­lar Mater­i­als dis­putes that claim.

Cir­cu­lar Mater­i­als’ app has also given incor­rect col­lec­tion days for addresses in River­side, cent­ral Eto­bicoke and the High­way 401 and Leslie Street neigh­bour­hood in North York. The situ­ation has escal­ated to the point where Ford has warned he may inter­vene, while city coun­cil­lors are demand­ing a 24­hour response line sim­ilar to the city’s former ser­vice.

“If it doesn’t work out, we’ll change it. That’s with any pro­gram we do — we tweak it,” Ford told report­ers on Monday.

How Venezuelan oil affects Canadian producers’ futures

This opinion was written by Charles St-Arnaud and was published in the Globe & Mail on January 9, 2026.

Storage tanks at oil facilities stand on Lake Maracaibo in Cabimas, Venezuela, on Wednesday. Increased imports of Venezuelan oil to the Gulf Coast could widen the price differential between West Texas Intermediate and Canadian crude, which sells for less. EDGAR FRIAS/ ASSOCIATED PRESS

Despite the relatively modest impact, trade diversification has become urgent

The U.S. administration’s stated goal to encourage massive investment by U.S. oil companies to revitalize Venezuela’s struggling oil infrastructure clearly shows President Donald Trump’s ambition to dramatically expand the country’s production.

For Canadian oil producers and policy makers, the reality is nuanced. Venezuela’s current output stands at a modest one million barrels a day (b/d), less than one-quarter of the volume of Canadian oil imported by the United States. The scale of investment required to restore Venezuela’s oil sector is immense, estimated at US$183-billion, according to Rystad Energy.

This means that, in the short term, Canadian oil remains indispensable to U.S. refineries, especially those in the Midwest, which consume nearly 69 per cent of Canada’s total oil exports. For Venezuelan oil to reach these refineries, significant logistical changes would be required, including reversing the pipeline flow – which currently runs from the Midwest to the Gulf Coast – and expanding capacity.

On the West Coast, refineries in Washington State benefit from direct access to Canadian crude via the Trans Mountain system. Shipping Venezuelan oil by tanker to the Pacific Northwest is prohibitively expensive, further reducing the likelihood that it will displace Canadian supply in that region. As a result, only Canadian oil exported to the Gulf Coast – representing about 10 per cent of total exports, or 350,000 b/d – is vulnerable to short-term competition from Venezuelan crude.

The risk for Canada is therefore limited. Even if Gulf Coast refiners switched entirely to Venezuelan oil, the impact would be a 10-percent reduction in oil exports, about US$15-billion, or a 2-percent decline in Canadian exports.

Nevertheless, 2 per cent can be a lot. The shock would be felt most acutely in Alberta, where such a drop could mean an 8-per-cent hit on provincial exports and a 3-percent reduction in GDP.

Moreover, the more immediate impact may be felt through pricing rather than direct displacement. Increased imports of Venezuelan oil to the Gulf Coast could widen the price differential between West Texas Intermediate and Canadian crude, which sells for less. Additionally, a surge in Venezuelan output would boost global supply, exerting downward pressure on oil prices worldwide.

For Canada, the lesson is clear: Trade diversification is not merely a strategic objective. It has become an urgent necessity. The country’s heavy reliance on the U.S. market, where more than 90 per cent of Canadian oil is exported, exposes it to significant risks.

The recent expansion of the Trans Mountain (TMX) pipeline has demonstrated the tangible benefits of diversification. Since its operational start in May, 2024, the share of Canadian oil exports to non-U.S. destinations has tripled, rising to 9 per cent from 3 per cent. This shift has narrowed the price differential between Canadian crude and international benchmarks, generating an estimated US$13-billion in additional oil revenues in the first year of operation, equivalent to an extra month of production at no cost.

Not all pipeline projects offer equal economic benefits. The TMX experience suggests that expanding export capacity on the West Coast yields economic returns that outweigh alternatives.

However, the construction of a new pipeline faces significant hurdles, including opposition from the British Columbia government and some First Nations, along with high costs and a lack of private-sector proponents.

But increased capacity to move oil away from the Midwest-Gulf Coast corridor would be the most effective way to reduce or even prevent a widening discount on Canadian crude. Moreover, global oil demand growth over the next decade is expected to be concentrated in Asia, making West Coast access even more valuable. In contrast, shipping Venezuelan oil to the Pacific is costlier, reducing the likelihood of direct competition with Canadian exports.

Other alternatives, such as pipelines to the Arctic or Atlantic Oceans, offer some advantages but fall short compared with West Coast expansion. The regime change in Venezuela may also spell the end for the Keystone XL pipeline project, which by bringing more oil to the Gulf Coast would only increase competition with Venezuelan oil and widen the price differential for Canadian crude.

Ultimately, the events in Venezuela underscore a critical lesson for Canada: Trade diversification is no longer optional. It is a pressing imperative for the country’s energy sector and broader economic resilience.

Addressing the health impacts of plastics is becoming more urgent

This opinion was written by Andre Picard and was published in the Globe & Mail on January 9, 2026.

A man rides a motorbike past a pile of plastic waste in Vietnam’s Hung Yen province, in November, 2025. More than 450 million tonnes of plastics are manufactured each year.

‘There’s a great future in plastics. Think about it. Will you think about it?” is a memorable line from the classic 1967 movie The Graduate.

Almost six decades later, the admonition to think about plastics is more timely and urgent than ever. But not because of the business opportunity – instead, it’s because of the growing realization that plastics are having an adverse impact on our health.

“Plastics are a grave, growing, and under-recognized danger to human and planetary health,” a recently published study in The Lancet medical journal stated bluntly. “Plastics cause disease and death from infancy to old age and are responsible for health-related economic losses exceeding US$1.5-trillion annually.” Think about it, indeed. Globally, more than 450 million tonnes of plastics are manufactured each year. Annual production has grown 400-fold since the Second World War, and is expected to hit a staggering 1.2 trillion tonnes by 2060.

What are all those plastics used for? Water bottles, tires, computers, food packaging, medical equipment, airplane parts, shampoos and just about any other product you can imagine.

It’s hard to overstate how revolutionary plastics have been, facilitating incredible advances in many fields: Medicine, engineering, food production, electronics, aerospace and more.

But the same qualities that make plastics useful – namely, their strength and durability – make them difficult to dispose of.

Plastics are essentially immortal. They end up in landfills and waterways, and in the air.

The majority of plastics end up being burned, while most of the rest pile up in the environment. It is estimated that the equivalent amount of a garbage truck full of plastics are dumped into oceans every minute of every day.

Despite our dutifully putting plastic waste out by the curb, very little of it is recycled – less than 10 per cent. It goes to the dump instead. That’s because plastic recycling is technically difficult and economically unviable. Let’s not forget, either, that plastics are made using fossil fuels. The plastic-manufacturing process releases about two gigatons of CO2 and other greenhouse-gas emissions into the atmosphere annually, contributing to climate change.

So, in addition to the planetary harm, what is all this doing to the health of humans, and other mammals?

In recent years, there has been growing interest in microplastics and nanoplastics, the tiny and often invisible bits of plastic that seep and ooze into our air, water and food.

Author and climate activist Assaad Razzouk calls microplastics the “mother of all oil spills.”

While it can take thousands of years for plastic to fully degrade, tiny microparticles are continually shed, especially when plastics are heated or burned.

One study, commissioned by the World Wildlife Fund, estimated that the average person inadvertently consumes up to five grams of plastic weekly – the equivalent of eating a credit card. (Some scientists have challenged the methodology, but the image remains a powerful one.)

Research suggests microplastics are accumulating in our brains (and other organs), and are common in breast milk and our bloodstreams. Animal research suggests exposure to microplastics can affect fertility and cognitive ability, and increase cancer risk, to name only a few worries.

There are, after all, more than 16,000 chemicals used in the manufacture of plastics. Some of them are toxic and carcinogenic; the potential impacts of many others are unknown.

The fossil-fuel and plastics industries argue there is no hard evidence that microplastics actually harm the health of people – the same arguments used by Big Tobacco to justify selling cigarettes, and by Big Oil to dismiss the effects of climate change.

The ultimate impact on human health is unclear because this sort of research is extremely complex, but it’s certainly not good.

There are certainly ways to mitigate the harms being caused by plastics and microplastics. Chief among them is reducing the unnecessary use of plastic products, particularly single-use plastics. Do we really need to produce 500 million bottles of water each year?

We could drastically reduce the use of plastic additives that are clearly harmful, like the widely used Bisphenol A (BPA), the chemical DEHP phthalate (which helps makes plastics more flexible), and the group of flame-retardant ethers known as PBDEs. We could also get a lot better at recycling, which principally requires better sorting.

“Plastics are the defining material of our age,” The Lancet has stated. As a result, plastics and microplastics are found everywhere, from the depths of the ocean to the highest mountains.

How we address the ubiquity of plastics, and their unintended consequences, will define the health of humanity, and the planet, in the years to come.

Canada needs a pipeline to the future

This editorial was written and published by the Globe & Mail on January 9, 2026.

Donald Trump is vowing to use Venezuela’s oil exports to drive down oil prices in the United States in what would be a major blow to the profit margins of Alberta’s oilpatch, and the province’s coffers.

Resumed shipments of high volumes of Venezuelan heavy oil to the refineries on the U.S. Gulf Coast after a near seven year absence would oversaturate the North American market for Alberta’s own heavy oil, driving down its price relative to lighter crude oils.

Existing production from Venezuela is the immediate threat confronting Alberta and its oil producers. That threat could grow in coming years, if U.S. capital and expertise rejuvenates Venezuela’s existing infrastructure and surge even more if unexploited reserves are tapped.

Anyone that shrugs off that threat should look at the historical prices for Western Canada Select (WCS) heavy oil and West Texas Intermediate (WTI) light crude.

In December, 2018, a barrel of WCS sold for just 12 per cent of the value of a barrel of WTI. But starting in 2019, Venezuelan exports to the United States began to plummet as sanctions tightened, withdrawing a significant source of heavy oil from North America. Exports dropped from 19.5 million barrels for the month of January to zero by July. And by July, Alberta’s WCS was selling for 78 per cent of the value of WTI. (Five years later, the opening of the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion had a similar effect, by allowing Canada to access new markets in Asia, siphoning off supplies of heavy oil from North America.)

Venezuela’s production in recent years has been shipped to Chinese refiners. But it appears that Mr. Trump intends to steer that oil into the U.S. market. Mr. Trump’s geopolitical machinations threaten to send that math into reverse, driving down the price of heavy oil. That would be an enormous boon to U.S. refiners and, most likely, American consumers.

Alberta and its oilpatch would suffer, with the pain growing with each new barrel of Venezuelan crude. Domestic producers have been improving their cost-competitiveness, but a glut of heavy oil would at a minimum hurt profitability. A big enough glut could have much worse effects.

Add to that the politically driven risk of continuing to depend so heavily on the U.S. market for Canadian energy exports.

The correct policy response is obvious, as we have previously argued: more pipeline capacity to Asia – where Chinese refiners, among others, will be thirsting for heavy oil to replace Venezuelan shipments.

Increasing the capacity of the Trans Mountain pipeline would be a quick first step. Beyond that, a new pipeline to the West Coast will be needed for Canada to connect with new Asian markets, perhaps including Japan.

Heather Exner-Pirot, senior fellow and director of energy, natural resources and environment at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, makes the unexpected point that Alberta’s heavy oil is particularly suited to the Japanese market, where gasoline demand is in long-term decline. Typically, Alberta’s heavy oil sells at a discount because it is harder to refine, and each barrel produces relatively less gasoline and more asphalt and petrochemicals.

But that calculus could be turned on its ear in Japan. Declining Japanese demand for gasoline means that refiners would be able to satisfy other petroleum product demands with relatively fewer barrels – making more efficient use of each barrel of Alberta heavy crude.

It will take political commitment (and billions of dollars) to connect with such markets. The rhetoric, at least, from political leaders is evolving. Prime Minister Mark Carney this week touted the “competitiveness of Canadian oil.” Still, Mr. Carney is only willing to say that his government is “working toward” a new pipeline. Meanwhile, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith has come up with a name (the Northwest Coast Oil pipeline), a website and a promise to submit a proposal to the federal Major Projects Office by July 1.

The two governments need to show, and soon, a plan for building a pipeline to the West Coast, including the not-small matter of who in the private sector will be footing the bill.

It may seem like Canada has all the time it needs, with the Trans Mountain expansion not yet fully utilized, and the prospects for expanded Venezuelan oil production hazy at best. But the events of the past year – and especially this week – have demonstrated the folly in dallying too long to safeguard the national interest.

Should Canada’s oil sec­tor fear a Venezuelan boom?

Des­pite stock mar­ket tumble, experts say any impact should be min­imal

Heavy crude pumped from Venezuela's fields, similar to Alberta's heavy bitumen, is in the spotlight after the U.S. captured Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro last weekend.

This article was written by Estella Ren and was published in the Toronto Star on January 8, 2026.

Fears that Venezuela’s oil resur­gence could intensify com­pet­i­tion with Canada are mount­ing, but some energy experts are brush­ing aside con­cerns that it will ser­i­ously threaten Canada’s bulk oil sup­ply to the U.S.

Heavy crude pumped from Venezuela’s fields, sim­ilar to Alberta’s heavy bitu­men, is now in the spot­light after the Amer­ican mil­it­ary cap­tured Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro in an auda­cious raid and U.S. Pres­id­ent Don­ald Trump vowed to revive the coun­try’s oil industry.

Shares of Canada’s top oils­ands com­pan­ies and the TSX energy subindex tumbled on Monday in response to wor­ries that Venezuela’s heavy crude could flood U.S. Gulf Coast refiner­ies and edge out Cana­dian pro­du­cers.

Rory John­ston, a Toronto­based oil mar­ket researcher, said he is not wor­ried that Venezuela will replace Canada’s dom­in­ant role in provid­ing oil to the U.S because the bulk of Cana­dian oil — about 2.5 mil­lion bar­rels a day — is shipped by pipeline from Alberta to land­locked refiner­ies in the U.S. Mid­w­est.

Those pipelines travel south only, giv­ing Canada a strong foothold in the inland mar­kets, mak­ing it hard for Venezuelan bar­rels to reach them, he said.

“I don’t think this is a major nearterm issue for Cana­dian oil com­pan­ies and their investors, par­tic­u­larly not to the scale of the sell­offs we saw in Cana­dian equity prices,” John­ston said.

The dense, sour crude from Venezuela was a nat­ural fit for Gulf Coast refiner­ies — which had been designed to pro­cess heavy oil — for dec­ades before the Trump admin­is­tra­tion imposed sweep­ing sanc­tions on Venezuela’s state­owned oil exports in 2017.

But John­ston said that while increased Venezuelan pro­duc­tion could boost com­pet­i­tion in the Gulf Coast, that region rep­res­ents a small mar­ket for Canada.

The less than 400,000 bar­rels a day shipped to the Gulf Coast account for only a small por­tion of the roughly four mil­lion bar­rels a day Canada sends to the U.S. over­all.

On Tues­day, Prime Min­is­ter Mark Car­ney down­played the threat from rising Venezuelan oil pro­duc­tion dur­ing a press con­fer­ence in Paris, arguing that Cana­dian crude remains cheaper, cleaner and a safer bet for buy­ers.

“Cana­dian oil will be com­pet­it­ive because it is low­risk, clearly lowrisk, low cost — the mar­ginal costs, there’s been huge pro­gress on get­ting down the costs, and low car­bon, which is what the Path­ways project car­bon cap­ture will bring,” Car­ney said.

Alberta and Ott­awa offi­cials com­mit­ted in Novem­ber to mov­ing for­ward with the Path­ways project, pro­posed by a group of major Cana­dian oils­ands com­pan­ies, to cap­ture car­bon from oils­ands facil­it­ies and achieve net­zero emis­sions by 2050.

Heather Exner­Pirot, dir­ector of energy, nat­ural resources, and envir­on­ment with think tank Mac­don­ald­Laur­ier Insti­tute, said she is not con­vinced Venezuela will be the main com­pet­itor with Canada at the Gulf Coast.

The South Amer­ican coun­try would need sig­ni­fic­ant upfront invest­ment and at least five to10 years to lift oil pro­duc­tion from about 800,000 bar­rels a day cur­rently to between two and three mil­lion bar­rels a day — its peak level in the 1990s, both Exner­Pirot and John­ston noted.

“I just don’t think there’s any­one look­ing to spend tens of bil­lions of dol­lars. And if they were, I don’t think they would choose Venezuela first,” said Exner­Pirot, point­ing to Venezuela’s polit­ical instabil­ity and rampant cor­rup­tion.

But she said the pro­spect of a Venezuelan oil comeback should prompt Canada to move faster to diver­sify oil exports bey­ond its near­sole cus­tomer, the U.S., and into Asian mar­kets.

Phil­ippe Le Bil­lon, a pro­fessor of geo­graphy and global affairs at the Uni­versity of Brit­ish Columbia, said he expects calls for diver­si­fic­a­tion to bol­ster broader sup­port for build­ing an addi­tional bitu­men pipeline from Alberta to the B.C. coast.

He warned, however, that bank­ing on oil is no long­term strategy, not­ing that key Asian buy­ers like China — now Venezuela’s top cus­tomer — are already pivot­ing to elec­tri­city and cleaner energy.

While Bil­lon says he believes a Venezuelan oil boom remains unlikely, he said there could be a dampen­ing of invest­ment and mar­ket valu­ation of the oil com­pan­ies in Alberta.

“If there is fur­ther oil glut for the U.S. oil mar­ket and Canada faces con­tin­ued dif­fi­culties in diver­si­fy­ing its oil mar­kets, then it’s nor­mal that people don’t want to invest in a mar­ket that is already flooded.”

Trump orders exit from more global organ­iz­a­tions

U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order suspending support for 66 organizations, agencies and commissions.

This article was written by Matthew Lee and Farnoush Amiri, and was published in the Toronto Star on January 8, 2026.

The Trump admin­is­tra­tion will with­draw from dozens of inter­na­tional organ­iz­a­tions, includ­ing the UN’s pop­u­la­tion agency and the UN treaty that estab­lishes inter­na­tional cli­mate nego­ti­ations, as the U.S. fur­ther retreats from global co­oper­a­tion.

Pres­id­ent Don­ald Trump on Wed­nes­day signed an exec­ut­ive order sus­pend­ing U.S. sup­port for 66 organ­iz­a­tions, agen­cies, and com­mis­sions, fol­low­ing his admin­is­tra­tion’s review of par­ti­cip­a­tion in and fund­ing for all inter­na­tional organ­iz­a­tions, includ­ing those affil­i­ated with the United Nations, accord­ing to a White House release.

Many of the tar­gets are UN­related agen­cies, com­mis­sions and advis­ory pan­els that focus on cli­mate, labour, migra­tion and other issues the Trump admin­is­tra­tion has cat­egor­ized as cater­ing to diversity and “woke” ini­ti­at­ives. Other non­UN organ­iz­a­tions on the list include the Part­ner­ship for Atlantic Cooper­a­tion, the Inter­na­tional Insti­tute for Demo­cracy and Elect­oral Assist­ance, and the Global Coun­terter­ror­ism Forum.

“The Trump Admin­is­tra­tion has found these insti­tu­tions to be redund­ant in their scope, mis­man­aged, unne­ces­sary, waste­ful, poorly run, cap­tured by the interests of act­ors advan­cing their own agen­das con­trary to our own, or a threat to our nation’s sov­er­eignty, freedoms, and gen­eral prosper­ity,” Sec­ret­ary of State Marco Rubio said.

Trump’s decision to with­draw from organ­iz­a­tions that foster cooper­a­tion among nations to address global chal­lenges comes as his admin­is­tra­tion has launched mil­it­ary efforts or issued threats that have rattled allies and adversar­ies alike, includ­ing cap­tur­ing auto­cratic Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and indic­at­ing an inten­tion to take over Green­land.

The admin­is­tra­tion pre­vi­ously sus­pen­ded sup­port for agen­cies like the World Health Organ­iz­a­tion, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees known as UNRWA, the UN Human Rights Coun­cil and the UN cul­tural agency UNESCO.

“I think what we’re see­ing is the crys­tal­liz­a­tion of the U.S. approach to mul­ti­lat­er­al­ism, which is `my way or the high­way,’” said Daniel Forti, head of UN affairs at the Inter­na­tional Crisis Group. “It’s a very clear vis­ion of want­ing inter­na­tional cooper­a­tion on Wash­ing­ton’s own terms.”

New power line will run under Lake Ontario

Province OKs link from Dar­ling­ton plant to port lands

This article was written by Rob Ferguson and was published in the Toronto Star on January 8, 2026.

Ontario is going under­wa­ter to get more elec­tri­city into Toronto, say­ing it’s the cheapest and least dis­rupt­ive option to meet fast­ grow­ing needs.

The province has approved a $1.5bil­lion sub­mar­ine trans­mis­sion line in Lake Ontario to get power from the Dar­ling­ton nuc­lear power plant west­ward into the port lands, instead of going over­land with a series of towers.

“This is the safest and low­est­cost best way to build capa­city for tomor­row,” Energy Min­is­ter Stephen Lecce said Wed­nes­day, not­ing the cable will be safer in extreme weather, such as floods and ice storms.

It will become a third trans­mis­sion line feed­ing Canada’s largest city. The project will be sub­ject to an envir­on­mental assess­ment and will go out for com­pet­it­ive bids in a pro­cess expec­ted to take seven to10 years.

The 900­mega­watt line — enough to power the equi­val­ent of 900,000 homes — should begin oper­at­ing by 2037, Lecce said.

The two exist­ing lines are slated to reach capa­city in the early 2030s, as demand for elec­tri­city con­tin­ues to grow thanks to vehicle elec­tri­fic­a­tion, the new Ontario Line sub­way and a lar­ger pop­u­la­tion. Demand is expec­ted to double by 2050.

Offi­cials said the sub­mar­ine cable will stretch 65 kilo­metres, with an exact route to be determ­ined fol­low­ing stud­ies of the lake bed.

The sheathed cable — sim­ilar to ones in oper­a­tion around the world, includ­ing sev­eral Atlantic provinces — is expec­ted to have the dia­meter of a large din­ner plate, offi­cials told a tech­nical brief­ing.

New Demo­crat MPP Jamie West (Sud­bury) said it will be import­ant to keep a close watch on the plan­ning pro­cess.

“The need for addi­tional elec­tri­city capa­city in Toronto is clear, but major ques­tions remain about cost cer­tainty, timelines and long­term impacts on rate­pay­ers,” he added in a state­ment to the Star.

“Decisions of this scale must be guided by evid­ence­based plan­ning and strong pub­lic over­sight.”

Lecce said the line could pave the way to the even­tual decom­mis­sion­ing of the Port Lands nat­ural gas­fired power plant, a major source of car­bon emis­sions.

With Premier Doug Ford’s gov­ern­ment build­ing four small mod­u­lar nuc­lear react­ors at the Dar­ling­ton site, the new line would be poised to carry elec­tri­city from them.

The province is also con­sid­er­ing a massive new nuc­lear plant just east of Dar­ling­ton in Port Hope, although that would not be in oper­a­tion until the 2040s.

The 900mega­watt line — enough to power the equi­val­ent of 900,000 homes — should begin oper­at­ing by 2037

The recyc­ling blues

Ford’s new sys­tem suf­fers grow­ing pains bey­ond bin col­lec­tion fail­ures

On Sunday, residents in the Bayview and Eglinton area were still waiting for recycling pickup after being told to have their bins out last Friday. Circular Materials is in charge of running recycling in Ontario and hired Green for Life Environmental to collect curbside recycling across Toronto.

This article was written by David Rider and was published in the Toronto Star on January 8, 2026.

The Ford gov­ern­ment’s new industry­run recyc­ling sys­tem is suf­fer­ing grow­ing pains bey­ond the many blue bins lan­guish­ing uncol­lec­ted since last week.

Recyc­ling bins get emp­tied on Indian Road Wed­nes­day while many have remained uncol­lec­ted under new sys­tem.

Key play­ers are point­ing fin­gers at each other for the ongo­ing col­lec­tion fail­ure in pock­ets of Toronto and giv­ing the pub­lic con­flict­ing, some­times inac­cur­ate inform­a­tion.

The prob­lems, ser­i­ous enough to prompt a warn­ing this week from Premier Doug Ford that he’ll inter­vene if neces­sary, now have a city offi­cial demand­ing that Cir­cu­lar Mater­i­als take res­id­ents’ recyc­ling quer­ies around the clock — as the city pre­vi­ously did — and CUPE Local 416 urging Ford to let Toronto revert to city­run recyc­ling.

Cir­cu­lar Mater­i­als, a national non­profit fun­ded by McDon­ald’s, Costco and other busi­nesses respons­ible for pack­aging, is in charge of run­ning recyc­ling in Ontario and hired Green for Life Envir­on­mental to col­lect curb­side recyc­ling across Toronto.

Coun. Paula Fletcher, chair of the city’s infra­struc­ture and envir­on­ment com­mit­tee, told the Star on Wed­nes­day: “Last fall, the head of Cir­cu­lar Mater­i­als came to our com­mit­tee and said the (new sys­tem’s) rol­lout would be great and that’s not what we’re see­ing at all.

“Instead, we’re in a Franz Kafka novel, where they’re all point­ing the fin­ger of blame at one another, nobody’s answer­ing the phone when res­id­ents call to com­plain, and homeown­ers are get­ting very frus­trated,” Fletcher said. “People used to get ter­rific (recyc­ling) ser­vice from the City of Toronto … At the very least, Cir­cu­lar Mater­i­als should have a 24­hour response line like the city’s 3­1­1 ser­vice.”

Key play­ers are point­ing fin­gers at each other for the ongo­ing col­lec­tion fail­ure in pock­ets of Toronto

Jan.1marked the end of a phase­in period for so­called exten­ded pro­du­cer respons­ib­il­ity, fully mak­ing recyc­ling sys­tems formerly run by muni­cip­al­it­ies the respons­ib­il­ity of com­pan­ies that pro­duce the waste — a switch Premier Doug Ford said would save cit­ies and towns mil­lions of dol­lars and, thanks to an expan­ded list of mater­i­als accep­ted in blue bins, divert more waste from land­fill.

A rocky run­up in 2025, includ­ing reg­u­la­tion changes in response to industry com­plaints, con­tin­ued into the new year. Swaths of Toronto, where res­id­ents were told to put out their bins for a spe­cial hol­i­day col­lec­tion last Fri­day or Sat­urday, saw no trucks arrive from GFL.

Des­pite Cir­cu­lar Mater­i­als’ apo­lo­gies and assur­ances that GFL has made pro­gress on the missed homes, some homeown­ers told the Star on Wed­nes­day their boxes remain at the curb.

Patti Cross, who lives on Ellins Avenue near Jane Street and St. Clair Avenue West, said bins that have sat in front of her and her neigh­bours’ homes since last Sat­urday, made it “dif­fi­cult to nav­ig­ate the side­walks with the recyc­ling, the extra bags of recyc­ling and the snow and ice accu­mu­la­tion.” She’s hop­ing that GFL trucks at least pick it up on Fri­day, their next sched­uled col­lec­tion.

Bins remained uncol­lec­ted Wed­nes­day on Gil Hardy’s side of Hill­s­dale Avenue East, in the Mount Pleas­ant­Eglin­ton East area. Hardy and his neigh­bours put their bins out last Thursday for Fri­day pickup. “It appears there’s an area roughly between Mount Pleas­ant Road and Bayview Avenue, and north Hill­s­dale and Eglin­ton East, which has still not been com­pletely served,” by GFL, he said.

An aide to Coun. Rachel Chernos Lin (Ward 15—Don Val­ley West) said “many” of the ward’s res­id­ents were still await­ing col­lec­tion.

Ted Aivalis, exec­ut­ive vice­pres­id­ent of CUPE Local 416, is renew­ing a call for the Ford gov­ern­ment to exempt Toronto from privat­ized recyc­ling. Last autumn, he pre­dicted Cir­cu­lar Mater­i­als would struggle to provide the same ser­vice that city work­ers provided east of Yonge Street, and that was con­trac­ted out to GFL west of Yonge but over­seen by city offi­cials.

“It’s obvi­ously not going well … so we should go back to the table and have that dis­cus­sion,” he said.

Neither Cir­cu­lar Mater­i­als or GFL have pub­licly explained why so many homes were missed. Cir­cu­lar Mater­i­als chief exec­ut­ive Allen Lang­don would only say that he had told GFL to fix the prob­lem as soon as pos­sible.

But a reader told the Star that a GFL cus­tomer sup­port agent blamed Cir­cu­lar Mater­i­als for the prob­lem, say­ing it did not give GFL suf­fi­cient notice of the spe­cial hol­i­day col­lec­tions. Cir­cu­lar Mater­i­als agreed with city offi­cials late last year to con­tinue the tra­di­tion of an extra pickup to deal with wrap­ping, boxes and other hol­i­day waste.

The Star called the help line and got the same inform­a­tion. “Essen­tially the (GFL) fleet wasn’t pre­pared to go out that day,” an agent said, because “notice (of the spe­cial col­lec­tions) was extremely late to actu­ally have a pos­it­ive effect, so we’re doing our best to clean that up.”

In a state­ment Wed­nes­day, Lang­don dis­puted that char­ac­ter­iz­a­tion.

“We have con­firmed with GFL that the state­ment regard­ing notice of the spe­cial pickup require­ment is not reflect­ive of the approved mes­saging being used by GFL staff nor the train­ing received by their cus­tomer ser­vice staff,” Lang­don said.

He added Cir­cu­lar Mater­i­als has a “strong and col­lab­or­at­ive work­ing rela­tion­ship with our ser­vice pro­vider, GFL Envir­on­mental” and they are work­ing around the clock with GFL “to ensure any missed res­id­en­tial pickup is addressed and will be col­lec­ted by the end of this week.”

Lang­don did not, however, address another prob­lem iden­ti­fied by read­ers and con­firmed by the Star. The Cir­cu­lar Mater­i­als app, which allows users to plug in their address and learn which day they get col­lec­tion, was on Wed­nes­day provid­ing the wrong recyc­ling day for many parts of Toronto.

For example, while the city and Cir­cu­lar Mater­i­als web­sites tell Hardy that his recyc­ling will be col­lec­ted every other Thursday, the app said his recyc­ling day is Tues­day. The app also gave incor­rect col­lec­tion days for addresses in River­side, cent­ral Eto­bicoke and the High­way 401 and Leslie Street neigh­bour­hood in North York.

The GFL cus­tomer ser­vice agent told the Star that the app is “buggy” and should be giv­ing cor­rect col­lec­tion dates by the end of this week.

Trump’s thirst for Venezuelan crude will hasten the death of oil

This opinion was written by John Rapley and was published in the Globe & Mail on January 8, 2026.

Oil pump jacks stand on Lake Maracaibo Lake in Cabimas, Venezuela, on Wednesday. It will be years, if ever, before Canada suffers any serious loss of market share to Venezuelan oil exports.

In Canada, there was anxious chatter over the weekend that the United States’ daring move to apprehend Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and secure the country’s oil reserves might hurt demand for Canadian oil.

It will be years, if ever, before Canada suffers any serious loss of market share to Venezuelan exports. Nevertheless, while a handful of U.S. oil giants will reap any benefits that accrue from this operation, the industry may have just taken a body blow. Because while U.S. President Donald Trump may have won the battle for Venezuelan oil – even that isn’t yet certain – he may also have lost the war for global energy dominance that his administration has set as a strategic goal.

Mr. Trump, who as we all know thinks climate change is a hoax and hates renewable energy, wants to restore the centrality of oil in the global energy mix and secure American dominance of its supply. To attain that goal, he has rolled back initiatives to decarbonize the U.S. economy and is now setting out to seize key sources of supply in the Americas. On the face of it, therefore, the Venezuelan operation is the first step toward that goal. Already we saw in Monday’s market trading that the share prices of the U.S. oil majors that can refine Venezuelan crude jumped.

Yet for the industry as a whole, the advantages of the Venezuelan operation are less clear. Let’s assume that Mr. Trump’s stated plan of having the U.S. oil giants “go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure, and start making money” works. The impact of that added supply to the world market would drive the price of oil, already below the break-even point for many U.S. shale drillers of US$60 a barrel, further down. The result might be higher profits for the big U.S. oil companies, but a recession for the domestic industry, with all the job losses that go with it.

And even for that plan to work, Mr. Trump would almost certainly have to launch a long and costly military occupation of Venezuela. The infrastructure and business environment there has been so degraded by decades of neglect and corruption that, by most estimates, it will take something in the range of US$100-billion of investment over 10 to 15 years to exploit the opportunities which are present. No company will make that sort of commitment without a guarantee of long-term security for both their staff and their investments.

The current regime won’t provide that. Despite his boast that the new acting president, Delcy Rodríguez, will do whatever she’s told, it’s the country’s military and militias which will determine the security environment. So far, they show little interest in taking U.S. orders.

Already on Monday the militias were out in force repressing any expressions of support for the coup. Although Mr. Trump insists he’s prepared to put U.S. troops on the ground, the response on world oil markets to the weekend’s events reveals considerable doubt that he will. World oil prices barely budged when markets reopened on Sunday night, suggesting that traders don’t expect the Venezuelan coup to have changed things all that much.

One unintended consequence of this action may be to hasten the decline of the industry. Now that Mr. Trump has shown he’s dead serious about his America First approach to the world, securing every advantage for the U.S. and disregarding any impact that might have on other countries, it’s to be expected others will follow suit. And if the U.S. wants to dominate global oil markets, a quick and easy way for a country to reduce its vulnerability is to reduce its need for oil.

The oil intensity of the world economy has been steadily declining for decades, and now an energy transition is under way across much of the world. Although Western countries have joined Mr. Trump in backpedalling on their moves to adopt renewable energy, the rest of the world is following China’s lead and moving toward decarbonization.

The big attraction of renewable energy to them is not that it will slow climate change, but that it will reduce their import dependence and foreign-exchange demands. Add to that a newly belligerent U.S. which is determined to weaponize oil, and the incentive to countries of cutting those ties will only strengthen.

Thus, analysts who determined that the Venezuelan operation would hurt China, since it imported oil from Venezuela, misread the situation: China’s stock market rose healthily on Monday. After all, the country is rapidly reducing its dependence on all imported oil and will if anything benefit from further increases in demand for its EVs and solar panels.

So, the threat facing Canada’s oil patch isn’t Venezuelan fields. It’s a geopolitical environment which may have just grown less keen on the stuff.

Ontario eyes $1.5-billion underwater power cable to Toronto

This article was written by Matthew McClearn and was published in the Globe & Mail on January 8, 2026.

Ontario’s government approved construction of a new underwater electricity line Wednesday that would connect Canada’s most populous city to the first nuclear power plant built in the country in more than a generation.

Known as the Third Line, it would run about 65 kilometres along the bottom of Lake Ontario from the Darlington Nuclear Generating Station in Clarington, Ont., to a terminal station in the Port Lands district just east of Toronto’s downtown core.

It would have a transmission capacity of 900 megawatts, enough to deliver all power produced by three of the four 300-megawatt small modular nuclear reactors planned to enter service at Darlington by the mid-2030s. (Construction of the first unit began last year. Darlington already hosts four much larger reactors built in the 1980s and 90s.)

Energy Minister Stephen Lecce said it would be Ontario’s first underwater transmission line. Subsea cables are used extensively elsewhere, including other Canadian provinces – one example being the Maritime Link, a 470megawatt cable across the Cabot Strait that connects the Muskrat Falls hydroelectric project in Labrador to Nova Scotia.

Including insulation, sheathing and armouring, the new cable could be one foot or more in diameter – although such engineering details haven’t yet been finalized.

Officials said the government will launch a competitive procurement later this year to select the transmitter to build the Third Line. Construction will begin next year and continue for between seven and 10 years. Mr. Lecce said the line must be in service by 2037 at the latest.

The project is expected to cost around $1.5-billion, Mr. Lecce said. That’s based on a high-level engineering estimate; the range is between $750-million and $3billion.

Officials acknowledged it’s the highest capital cost among the three options considered by the province’s grid operator, the Independent Electricity System Operator.

But IESO representatives argued Wednesday the additional cost was justified because the two land-based options, which follow existing transmission corridors from Pickering into Toronto, would provide less electricity transmission capacity. They would therefore meet the city’s requirements only until about 2040, so additional capacity would be needed shortly after their commissioning.

Chuck Farmer, the IESO’s executive vice-president of power system development, said the underwater line would meet all likely scenarios for electricity demand “well into the 2050s.”

Officials also said the underwater cable would be more resilient to storms and other extreme weather than overland lines.

The approval arrives at a moment when electricity demand within Toronto is expected to surge. A report published by the IESO in October warned that peak demand within the city (currently around 5,000 megawatts) could nearly double within 20 years.

Chuck Farmer, the IESO’s executive vice-president of power system development, said the underwater line would meet all likely scenarios for electricity demand ‘well into the 2050s.’

And although the highest demand for power has traditionally occurred during the summer, the IESO expects those peaks could arrive during the winter as soon as the early 2030s.

Toronto is served by two overland transmission lines, one from the east and another from the west. The government expects these lines will reach their maximum transmission capacity beginning in the 2030s.

Toronto Hydro, the city’s local electricity distributor, offered unequivocal support for the submarine cable. Chief executive officer Jana Mosley said electricity demand is expected to double over the next 25 years, driven by new homes, expansion of the city’s transit system and adoption of electric vehicles. She said her utility connected more than 4,800 customers last year.

“With the province taking the next step in linking future generation resources to future customer growth through this essential transmission project,” she said, “we know that we’re going to have the electricity that Torontonians need for decades to come.”

The Third Line could influence the future of the Portlands Energy Centre, a natural-gas-fired power plant east of downtown Toronto. Citing the greenhouse gas emissions from the facility, the municipality has called on the IESO to retire it by 2035 and thereafter use it only in emergencies or exceptional circumstances.

The IESO insists that the station is “critical to the reliability of both Toronto’s and the broader province’s electricity supply,” but that the Third Line would reduce local reliance on the station. Even so, the 550-megawatt fossil fuel station “may still be needed to meet the provincial grid’s peak needs,” the IESO said in its October report.

Mr. Lecce said the underwater line would allow Toronto to reduce its dependence on natural gas, including “over time” decommissioning the plant.