This article was written by Stuti Mishra and was published by the Independent on January 1, 2026.
This article was written by Lauren Krugel and was published in the Toronto Star on January 6, 2026.
Shares in Canada’s biggest oilsands producers came under pressure Monday after the U.S. military captured the Venezuelan leader and U.S. President Donald Trump announced plans to put that country’s oil industry into the hands of American companies.
Cenovus Energy Inc. and Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. were each down about five per cent and Suncor Energy Inc. dropped 1.4 per cent. Enbridge Inc., which operates a vast crossborder oil pipeline network it plans to expand, and South Bow Corp., whose Keystone system ships crude to the U.S., each fell around three per cent.
Overall, the TSX energy subindex was down more than three per cent.
Refineries on the U.S. Gulf Coast are set up to process heavy crude like that produced in Alberta’s oilsands and in Venezuela. But U.S. sanctions on the South American country have meant virtually none of its supplies go to the U.S. market today.
“If those restrictions were lifted, then Canada may have more competition right away in terms of Venezuelan oil that now technically can access the U.S. Gulf Coast,” said Jackie Forrest, executive director of the ARC Energy Research Institute.
But Forrest said any discounts on Canadian heavy oil prices would be “modest” — in the $2 to $3 (U.S.) per barrel range — so the market reaction Monday “seems a bit overdone.”
Canada sends about 400,000 barrels a day of crude to the world’s largest refining complex on the Gulf Coast, a relatively small portion of the roughly four million barrels a day of oil Canada supplies to the U.S. overall. Most currently goes to refineries in the Midwest region, which is deeply integrated with pipeline networks originating in Alberta, like Enbridge’s Mainline and South Bow’s Keystone.
Cenovus Energy Inc. and Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. were each down about five per cent and Suncor Energy Inc. dropped 1.4 per cent
There are ways to offset some of that pricing pressure by exporting crude abroad, via the Gulf Coast or from the Trans Mountain pipeline on the West Coast, Forrest added.
Not much has changed in oil markets nearterm and it could be months or even years before the fate of sanctions and Venezuela’s production shakes out, said Dane Gregoris, managing director of Enverus’s oil and gas research group.
“Political changes happen quickly, but industrial changes happen very slowly,” he said.
But he said there’s a “reasonable case to be made” for investors to reduce their exposure to Canadian energy names under the assumption that more heavy oil may eventually flow to the U.S. market and weigh on Canadian prices.
“I think that’s why you’re seeing a broad selloff of oil and gas equities today,” he said. “Some of that seems a little bit overstated or kind of snap reaction.”
Up until 2000, Canada and Venezuela each sent about the same amount to the U.S., but Venezuela’s exports have since dwindled to virtually nothing while the Canadian share has grown, Derek Holt, head of capital markets economics at Scotiabank wrote in a report Monday.
It’s clear Trump wants to take control of Venezuela’s oil reserves — 300 billion barrels or about 17 per cent of the world’s total, Holt wrote.
“It’s a hostile takeover in the global energy sector, the only difference being that guns were used instead of shareholder tactics.”
But he cautioned against leaping to the conclusion “this will unleash a torrent of new supply on world markets with effects that allegedly include snowing under Canada’s oil industry.”
Meanwhile, the United States’ own production has been crowding out imports and the world is awash in supply, putting pressure on global prices.
The price of West Texas Intermediate crude, the key U.S. light oil benchmark, saw a bump on Monday, but it was still below the $60 per barrel mark and about 20 per cent lower than it was at this time last year.
“What do you think unleashing three billion barrels of reserves in Venezuela would do to world oil prices relative to production breakevens? U.S. Big Oil isn’t that dumb,” Holt wrote, adding domestic and Canadian infrastructure is also well established in the U.S. market.
“Nevertheless, the prudent thing for Canada to do would be to act with a greater sense of urgency in terms of building capacity to export oil to Asia (arguably ditto for Mexico),” Holt wrote.
It could take five to 10 years for Venezuela to meaningfully ramp up its production if it were to get a stable government and attract investment, Forrest said. But long term, it makes sense for Canada to send more of its oil to Asia, Forrest said.
“Hopefully it increases our motivation,” she said. “We need new outlets for our crude oil to diversify our export markets to protect us from threats like this.”
This opinion was written by Chris Arsenault and was published in the Globe & Mail on January 6, 2026. Chris Arsenault is the chair of the journalism program at Western University and a former reporter covering Venezuela
When it comes to the country with the world’s largest oil reserves, U.S. President Donald Trump didn’t mince words on why U.S. commandos seized Venezuela’s President. “They stole our oil,” Mr. Trump said.
Put aside for a moment clear violations of international law from U.S. actions and the fact “our” oil somehow ended up under Venezuela’s soil.
A picture Mr. Trump posted on Truth Social of deposed Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro handcuffed and blindfolded in a tracksuit aboard a U.S. navy ship conjures images of other oil-rich autocrats deposed by Washington and its proxies: Iraq’s Saddam Hussein and Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi. Neither of those interventions ended well.
Mr. Trump’s plan to “have our very large United States oil companies” go and “spend billions of dollars” to “fix the badly broken infrastructure” and start making money, faces a host of problems: moral, political and logistical.
In short, don’t expect a big influx of Venezuela’s estimated 303 billion barrels of oil to end up on tankers heading north any time soon.
Mr. Maduro is a bumbling, brutal, inept autocrat. He blatantly stole the last election and his disastrous mismanagement forced nearly eight million Venezuelans to flee. Most Venezuelans are happy to see him gone. But like past U.S. interventions in major oil producers, power vacuums can create chaos.
War games simulations run previously by Washington on what could happen after Mr. Maduro’s ouster indicate the chances for low-intensity civil conflict are substantial. Already, armed members of pro-Maduro civilian militias are out in force in the capital Caracas.
Leftist rebels from Colombia operate in jungle areas around Venezuela’s borders. Attempts by Exxon or other U.S. oil majors – who had their assets nationalized by Maduro predecessor Hugo Chávez – to bring in technicians and repair infrastructure to expand production are likely to be met by resistance, just as U.S. forces and oil companies faced in Iraq.
The plan, as it was for Iraq, is for Venezuela’s oil wealth to finance the military and political costs of controlling the country, or as the U.S. Department of War put it to, ‘[reimburse the] people in our country who were forced out of Venezuela.’
Ahead of that invasion in 2003, the administration of former president George W. Bush changed the name of its planned Operation Iraqi Liberation (OIL) to Operation Iraqi Freedom, seemingly aware of the optics. Mr. Trump has no such scruples. He’s almost refreshingly honest about U.S. foreign policy goals.
America can deploy gunboat diplomacy around the globe, but Mr. Trump shouldn’t hold his breath waiting for a cheque.
Venezuela’s oil production dropped from more than three million barrels a day (b/d) in the early 2000s to less than one million in 2025, according to the consultancy Wood Mackenzie, owing to chronic mismanagement and U.S. sanctions.
Big increases in production, the kind of return on investment required for toppling a government and rebuilding an industry, will not be cheap or easy.
In a favourable scenario, a reasonable security environment and lots of capital, Wood Mackenzie estimates boosting production by one million b/d could happen within a couple of years.
Beyond refitting old wells or other repairs, expanding productive capacity is a longer-term and more expensive project. Venezuela’s largest reserves sit in the Orinoco Belt, a region with heavy crude not so different from Canada’s oil sands.
Boosting production to three to four million b/d means creating new infrastructure to access Orinoco crude which could take a decade and cost more than US$100-billion. The Trump administration, presumably, will be long gone by then.
As explosions rang out in Caracas, one subset of Canada’s political class fretted about domestic oil exports to the U.S. being replaced by production from Venezuela.
“The consequences to Alberta and Canada’s economy will be severe,” wrote Kevin M. Vickers, one-time New Brunswick Liberal Party leader and Canada’s former ambassador to Ireland, who lamented the potential impact on shareholders and pension funds. In the midst of a blatant resource grab, his concerns are misplaced. Moreover, his worries aren’t grounded in medium-term oil market realities.
Given Venezuela’s current state, it is hard to imagine anyone wanting to invest tens of billions of dollars in long-term infrastructure today.
The real problem for the hemisphere, and Canada specifically, given recent U.S. annexation threats, is an unabashed return to powerful states taking natural wealth by force.
“Today it is Venezuela,” wrote Chilean President Gabriel Boric, “tomorrow it could be any other country.”
This opinion was written by Eric Reguly and was published in the Globe & Mail on January 6, 2026.
The U.S. President is, in effect, creating his own personal OPEC in the Western Hemisphere
The U.S. is the world’s top oil producer. Venezuela has the world’s greatest oil reserves. Donald Trump has threatened Colombia and Mexico – two Latin American countries with fairly rich oil supplies.
You can see where this is going. Mr. Trump is, in effect, creating his own personal OPEC within the Western Hemisphere. America’s phenomenal oil output was not enough. The big missing piece was Venezuela. The U.S. is now “in charge” of Venezuela, he told reporters over the weekend, after the Pentagon’s special forces abducted Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and delivered him to New York to face criminal narcoterrorism charges.
“We’re in the oil business,” Mr. Trump told Fox News on Sunday.
Mr. Trump has said he will deploy U.S. oil companies to “go in, spend billions of dollars [and] fix the badly broken infrastructure” that had crunched Venezuela’s output. The country used to produce more than three million barrels a day; lately, fewer than one million have been pumped.
On Monday, the global oil markets had a fairly restrained reaction to the Trump-inspired regime change in Caracas and the President’s vow to return Venezuela’s oil fields to glory. Brent Crude, the international benchmark, rose about 1.5 per cent to US$62 a barrel, for a oneyear loss of 20 per cent. Clearly, oil traders are not expecting Venezuela’s output to ramp up or down quickly.
But that’s not to say that the U.S., with Venezuela by its side, won’t be able to manipulate the global oil markets at some point. It’s a question of time and money. Various energy analysts have said that the Venezuelan oil fields would require tens of billions of dollars of investment just to keep production from falling further, and perhaps US$100-billion to double output from today’s levels. Production is unlikely to change much in the next two or three years, but could in five or six.
A lot could go wrong with Mr. Trump’s plan to turn Venezuela into an oil superpower to bolster America’s own energy superpower status. Shorn of its leader, Venezuela could descend into chaos. The streets could fill with anti-resources-colonialism protests. Venezuela’s oil hardware could be in worse shape than anyone realized. A legal quagmire over compensation for the nationalizations that shut out the U.S. oil companies years ago could stall investments. (Chevron was the one U.S. oil biggie that was not booted out of Venezuela.)
But a lot could go right. If the oil companies find ways to make a strong return on investment and feel certain that the U.S. military and banks won’t abandon them, torrents of Venezuelan oil could hit the market.
Suppose Venezuela reaches three million barrels a day. Add that to U.S. production of 13.5 million and you are up to 16.5 million, or more than half of OPEC’s daily production of 30 million. (The U.S. is not an OPEC member; Venezuela is.) The effective U.S.-controlled oil output could go higher if Mr. Trump, say, forces regime change in Colombia. He has accused Colombian President Gustavo Petro of operating “cocaine mills” and that Mr. Petro should “watch his ass.”
Venezuelan and U.S. output alone would be enough to swing global oil prices to America’s advantage – and cause trouble.
Suppose Mr. Trump or his successors want oil prices to fall before an election. They could flood the market and OPEC might be powerless to keep prices high enough to finance their member countries’ budgets, or those of Russia, a non-OPEC member.
According to Ukrainian news outlets, Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska said, “If our American ‘partners’ get to the oil fields of Venezuela, they will control more than half of the world’s oil reserves,” adding that the scenario would ensure that the price of Russian oil “does not rise above US$50 a barrel,” threatening the country’s economic model.
Canada could become another victim. Almost all of Canada’s oil exports, largely from the Alberta oil sands, go to U.S. refineries, some of which are tailored to handle the heavy crude. Venezuelan crude from the Orinoco belt has a similar makeup. If Venezuela’s exports come on strong, they could displace much of Canada’s market share in the U.S., all the more so because the Venezuelan oil could be fed to the same refineries that now use Canadian crude.
China is still another potential victim. The country is Venezuela’s biggest export customer. Reuters reported that China took about 80 per cent of Venezuela’s exports of about 920,000 barrels a day in November as part of its oil-for-loans program. If the U.S. were to place sanctions on China, those oil exports could disappear fast.
The U.S. could heap more pressure on China by bombing Iran, which it did last June. In 2025, China was buying some 1.4 million barrels a day from Iran. If the U.S. or Israel were to bomb Iranian oil sites, and all of Venezuela’s crude oil exports were to go to the U.S., China would be hard-pressed to find replacement supplies.
The late comedian George Carlin said, “America is an oil company with an army.” Mr. Trump proved that on the weekend. With control of Venezuela’s oil reserves, he will soon be able to damage countries without firing a shot.
This opinion was written by Andrew Willis and was published in the Globe & Mail on January 6, 2026.
On Monday, the market said – loud and clear – we are heading into an oil glut. The market did not say – in any way, shape or form – it is time to build another pipeline to get more Alberta bitumen to the British Columbia coast.
Investors knocked the stuffing out of oil sands producers such as Athabasca Oil Corp. and Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. on Monday. The price of shares in both Calgary-based companies dropped more than 6 per cent as part of a broad decline in the domestic energy sector triggered by the U.S. government’s capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro on Saturday.
Canadian energy companies didn’t sell off because Venezuela is about to begin pumping crude at levels not seen in more than two decades. Bitter experience in Iraq and Libya shows there’s rarely a straight line between deposing dictators and rebuilding the economies of the countries they ran.
Athabasca, Canadian Natural and other domestic producers sold off because investors are coming to grips with the fact that OPEC, Russia, the United States, Canada and maybe Venezuela are poised to produce just enough oil to keep prices in the US$50 to US$60-per-barrel range for the foreseeable future.
That’s a consumer-friendly outcome, one sure to please U.S. President Donald Trump. However, low oil prices undermine the economic case for another pipeline in B.C.
That didn’t stop Alberta Premier Danielle Smith from using the chaos in Venezuela, and the potential for increased shipments of its heavy oil to U.S. refineries at the expense of provincial producers, as a reason to repeat her call for a second pipeline, in addition to the federal government-owned Trans Mountain pipeline.
“Recent events surrounding Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro emphasize the importance that we expedite the development of pipelines to diversify our oil export markets,” said Ms. Smith in a post on X.
What happened over the weekend in Venezuela complicates the Alberta government’s already complex analysis of pipeline economics by a group that includes three major operators – Enbridge Inc., South Bow Corp. and Trans Mountain Corp.
Over the next year, eliminating U.S. sanctions on Venezuela’s oil industry could increase exports by several hundred thousand barrels a day, according to RBC Capital Markets head of global energy research Greg Pardy. And that oil may go to U.S. refiners, rather than customers in China who built links to the Maduro regime. However, what the U.S. military did over the weekend doesn’t ensure Venezuela regains its former stature as a major oil exporter, on par with Canada.
“Restoring the country’s production back toward the three million barrels-per-day range would require years of annual investment of some US$10-billion anchored by a stable security environment, both of which are tall orders,” Mr. Pardy said in a report.
Expanding the Trans Mountain pipeline has served Canadians well by narrowing the gap between the price domestic producers receive and world oil prices. Along with increased industry revenues, both the Alberta and federal governments are benefiting from higher royalties.
On Monday, analysts published worse-case scenarios that showed the discount on Alberta heavy oil price could increase, as U.S. refiners play off Canadian producers against Venezuelan rivals, who produce the same kind of oil. These rivals include U.S. companies such as Chevron Corp., which is still operating in the South American country.
Athabasca and Calgary-based Strathcona Resources Ltd. are the domestic companies most exposed to any increase in the discount – the difference between the price fetched by West Texas Intermediate oil and heavier grades – on what American producers pay for Alberta oil.
However, it’s far from clear these worst-case scenarios will come to pass.
“The oil pundits may be getting way ahead of themselves,” said Derek Holt, head of capital markets economics at Bank of Nova Scotia, in a report on Monday.
“Greater caution is required before leaping to their conclusions that this will unleash a torrent of new supply on world markets with effects that allegedly include snowing under Canada’s oil industry,” Mr. Holt said.
Plucking Mr. Maduro and his wife from their beds changed the political picture in Venezuela. It didn’t fundamentally change the economics of the energy market. Current oil prices reflect more supply than demand for crude.
There may be a business case for another oil pipeline from Alberta to the West Coast. What happened in Caracas over the weekend failed to make that case.
This article was written by Emma Graney and was published in the Globe & Mail on January 6, 2026.
Strathcona’s Waterous says new project to West Coast would preserve current production levels
Canadian oil tycoon Adam Waterous says building a new pipeline to the B.C. coast to expand access to overseas markets is now even more urgent, given U.S. President Donald Trump’s vow to get Venezuela’s crude pumping with the help of billions of dollars invested by American oil majors.
Prime Minister Mark Carney has promised two-year approvals for major nationbuilding projects such as pipelines, but that needs to be trimmed to three months or less to remain competitive, says Mr. Waterous, the chief executive of Waterous Energy Fund and executive chairman of oil producer Strathcona Resources Ltd.
A new pipeline is no longer about growing the oil and gas sector, Mr. Waterous said in an interview, it’s about preventing industry contraction when more Venezuelan oil eventually enters the market.
The potential for a shifting tide in Venezuelan oil comes after U.S. forces captured President Nicolás Maduro and his wife in a military raid at the weekend. On Sunday, Mr. Trump asserted that “we’re in charge” of the country and would bring in U.S. oil companies to take over energy infrastructure.
Given the Venezuelan industry’s state of disrepair, it could take several years, and perhaps as much as US$100-billion, for oil production to get back to the three million barrels a day (b/d) the country was producing in the late 1990s. U.S. oil majors have so far been silent on any plans to rebuild Venezuela’s oil industry.
Around US$53-billion investment would be needed over the next 15 years just to keep Venezuela’s crude oil production flat at 1.1 million b/d, Rystad Energy said in an analysis Monday. It estimated that only 300,000 b/d of additional supply can be restored within the next two to three years with limited incremental spending.
Regardless, Mr. Waterous said Venezuelan supplies threaten to displace Canadian oil sands crude in the medium term.
“We need to find new markets or our production will fall. So now, building a new pipeline is not to grow the business – it’s to avoid shrinking,” he said.
No longer can the federal government create a static regulatory environment where twoyear approvals are set in stone “and it ignores what else is going on in the world,” he said.
“Whatever level of urgency there was to build a pipeline has now gone up, because … now it’s just protecting what we’ve got. That’s a very different dynamic.”
Mr. Waterous was one of 38 Canadian energy company heads who wrote to Mr. Carney days after the Liberal Leader clinched a victory in the April election, laying out their asks for the sector.
One of those was a six-month approval timeline for major oil and gas projects; at the time, a schedule commensurate with the United States. But that country has deregulated even further over the past year, Mr. Waterous said, meaning Canada needs three-month approvals to remain competitive. And that may drop further given rapid changes in international markets, he said.
“The world is not static. We’re in a competition, we’re in a race for dollars and our competitor is not standing still,” he said.
Stephen Legault, senior manager of the Alberta Energy Transition at Environmental Defence, countered that the global transition to clean energy is well under way and accelerating rapidly, negating the need for any new oil pipeline from Alberta to Canada’s West Coast.
“If the oil and gas industry is not interested in investing in more production capacity in Canada, why would they do so in Venezuela? They know what is coming and are focused on profit-taking while they still can,” he said in a statement.
According to Rystad, there is a “realistic technical pathway” for Venezuela to raise production to three million b/d, but it would take around 15 years.
The firm’s base case scenario for the country from December, 2025, assumed continuous sanctions and blockade, which it estimated would see oil production decline gradually from 1.1 million b/d currently to 700,000 b/d in 2040.
“While we maintain our base case call for now, we may consider another scenario in which international oil companies develop full confidence in a stable investment climate and are offered reasonable incentives to commit capital to Venezuela’s oil sector,” it wrote.
However, in the current market environment, “it is hard to imagine what kind of measures could trigger this ‘full confidence’ sentiment,” it said.
Jim Burkhard, the global head of crude oil research at S&P Global Energy, said the developments in Venezuela do little to alter the fact that the global oil market is facing a surplus at the start of 2026.
“Whether Venezuela crude oil production grows after years of neglect is a question that will be answered over months and years, and only with significant levels of investment. For now, prevailing oil market fundamentals remain largely unchanged,” Mr. Burkhard said.
Given little expectation that Venezuelan oil could quickly return to markets in large volumes, the short-term price impact has been muted. U.S. benchmark West Texas Intermediate crude rose 1.8 per cent to US$58.37 a barrel on Monday, reflecting a glut in global supplies.
However, investor fears about the potential impact on Canadian heavy crude sparked a selloff in the shares of the country’s major producers. The S&P/TSX Capped Energy Index fell 3.4 per cent on the day, with big names such as Canadian Natural Resources Ltd., Suncor Energy Inc., Imperial Oil Ltd. and Cenovus Energy Inc. all declining. Mr. Waterous’s Strathcona Resources fell more than 2 per cent.
In a report, analysts at TD Cowen laid out various scenarios for the impact on Canadian oil, specifically the heavy crude that both countries have in massive reserves. If Venezuela’s political and economic situation is normalized quickly, the impact on Canadian heavy crude would be negative. Assuming Venezuela’s production recovers in a year or two – which the bank sees as highly unlikely – the new supplies would compete directly with Alberta bitumen in the U.S. Gulf Coast region and discounts would widen sharply.
With a slower, messier resumption in output over several years, Canada could maintain its advantage as a secure and reliable supplier to the U.S., though price discounts would still widen to more historical levels below US$20 a barrel under West Texas Intermediate crude prices. It pegged that outcome at a 60-per-cent possibility.
With a political change but no major increase in Venezuela’s production, Canada’s oil price discount could hover in the recent favourable range, TD Cowen said, putting the chances of that at 25 per cent.
With “no durable transition” in power in Venezuela, and little improvement in output, Canada’s heavy oil producers would enjoy price advantages and investor confidence.
This article was written by Victoria Gibson and was published in the Toronto Star on January 5, 2026.
Tobiah Abramson just wants to talk to someone about his recycling pickup.
Like his neighbours in Toronto’s Humewood neighbourhood adjacent to St. Clair Avenue West, Abramson was told there would be a special recycling pickup on Friday — the first under Ontario’s new, privatized recycling system run by industry group Circular Materials. He heeded the advice to make sure his bin, packed with boxes and other household discard after the holidays, was outside well before 7 a.m. — bringing it to the curb late on New Year’s Day.
But two days after the scheduled pickup, his bin was still there. All down his midtown street on Sunday — like others around it — blue bins sat, bursting with delivery boxes and Christmas wrappings, now dusted with snow.
Standing on his porch, Abramson recounted his dayslong effort to speak with someone about the new curbside recycling system that began Jan. 1. That new system came as a result of provincial legislation that aimed to make companies that produce recyclable materials responsible for administering the recycling system instead of municipalities, which used to handle it.
Abramson’s first call was on New Year’s Day to GFL Environmental, the company contracted by Circular Materials for curbside recycling in Toronto, with a question about the upcoming pickup. “Their call centre was closed,” Abramson said.
He called again Friday, when his bin didn’t get picked up as expected: “I was on hold for 35 minutes.”
When Abramson finally got ahold of someone at GFL, he recalls them saying there were still trucks on the roads, and to hang tight to see if they came by.
“Then I tried calling again (Sunday), and their call centre is closed again,” he said. “I just want my stuff picked up — and I want to be able to talk to someone.”
Over the first weekend of the new year, confusion over blue box pickups has reigned in this midtown neighbourhood, as well as others like it elsewhere in Toronto. Bins expected to be emptied then hauled back into garages and yards remained on the curbside, and Torontonians who spoke to the Star said they weren’t sure what had gone wrong, or when the trucks might arrive.
Some neighbours in Humewood pointed to a waste collection calendar for 2026, which didn’t show a scheduled recycling pickup for Friday, but a pickup for garbage and organic waste, instead. Other residents pointed to glossy blue cards they say arrived after the initial schedule was distributed, promising a special collection on Friday “to manage excess recycling following the holiday period.”
Allen Langdon, CEO of Circular Materials, said in a statement to the Star that his team had spoken with GFL and confirmed expected curbside collection in certain neighbourhoods located in two different districts of Toronto — together ranging from the Humber River to Victoria Park, between Steeles Avenue and Lake Ontario — did not take place as expected on Friday or Saturday.
Langdon said residents would have received a postcard about the special collection date that was outside the regular pickup cycle to help with added recycling expected from the holidays.
“Any household that did not receive a collection will be collected starting tomorrow and during this week. Residents are asked to please leave their recycling out to support pick up,” Langdon’s statement on Sunday said.
“We apologize for any inconvenience and thank residents for their patience and engagement.”
Coun. Josh Matlow, whose Toronto—St. Paul’s ward includes the Humewood area, said he got emails from confused residents over the weekend. His concern is that under the new private system, Torontonians have less recourse than before, when they could send an email to their councillor or call 311.
“I don’t actually expect that most people have incredibly strong views about who picks up their recycling as long as it’s done and done well,” said Matlow. “But underlying all that is that when it’s not done well, it’s far easier to contact your city government who is directly elected and accountable to you to provide better service.”
Matlow also noted that the timing of the issue was especially irksome.
“Right at the end of the holiday season, when everybody’s got lots of wrapping and boxes, and all the boxes from the gifts over the holidays — it kind of infuriated people even more,” he said.
One street over from Abramson’s home, longtime residents Mario Godlewski and Madelyn Petzold have also been waiting for their blue bin pickup.
“Everyone around here dutifully put out their blue box and their grey box, so the streets were just cluttered with boxes, and that was on Friday, Jan. 2, but they didn’t come around and pick it up,” said Petzold. “Most people left the blue box sitting there, thinking maybe they’ll get to it on Saturday — but no.”
Godlewski tried to reach someone about the issue by phone, but said his call went unanswered. “It’s Sunday, so nobody responds,” he said.
He sees the pickup issue as just one of the wideranging frustrations Torontonians nowadays deal with on a daytoday basis, from public transit to road traffic.
He’s wary of services like the curbside pickups being put in private hands.
“There’s no public accountability or responsibility once you contract these — what should be public and municipal responsibilities — to a private enterprise.”
In Petzold’s eyes, the pickup problem also remains a municipal issue despite being handed to a private enterprise, as the bins are now blocking sidewalks.
“So, who do you call now? If you call your city councillor, they’re going to say `no, we don’t deal with blue boxes.’ If you call the blue box people, they either don’t answer or they’re a private company so there’s no responsibility.”
This article was written by David Rider and was published in the Toronto Star on January 5, 2026.
A key figure in Ontario’s recycling transition says the new system has been set up in a needlessly bureaucratic way.
Allen Langdon, chief executive of Circular Materials — the packaging industry’s nonprofit that has taken over recycling from municipalities as of Jan. 1 — told the Star that, in the years ahead, the province should move to a model that looks more like British Columbia’s highly regarded program. Others, meanwhile, are pointing the finger back at Circular Materials itself, saying the industryfriendly organization has slowed progress and will be the face of a rollout they expect to be a “disaster.”
Langdon knows the B.C. model. Years before he was hired by Circular Materials he helped set up North America’s first “extended producer responsibility” regime in that western province, one that is still considered, more than a decade later, a gold standard for the recycling industry.
It’s too late to streamline Ontario’s system as municipalities handed off bluebox responsibilities to Circular Materials, funders of which include Loblaw, Costco, CocaCola and Keurig Dr Pepper Canada, on New Year’s Day — “that ship has sailed,” Langdon told the Star in an interview. But he’s hopeful that, down the road, this province will adopt policies and practices roadtested in B.C.
“Ontario’s system has created complexities and added administrative burden, rather than the flexible approach B.C. took of continuous improvement over a number of years and several plans,” said Langdon, who also oversees Circular Materials operations in Alberta, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Yukon. From 2013 to 2018, he was managing director for Recycle B.C.
“Simplifying Ontario’s system would make it cheaper, more flexible and more responsive.”
Langdon said he doesn’t know why the Ford government crafted a madeinOntario plan rather than follow B.C.’s example, adding, “They could have asked me, or others. I have no idea why they didn’t.”
Ontario’s regulations are “hardwired” into legislation and difficult to change, Langdon said, compared with B.C.’s more flexible launch that allowed some municipalities to stick with their own programs until they felt comfortable switching to the industryrun system.
Ontario created the Resource
Productivity and Recovery Authority (RPRA) to regulate and enforce the province’s “circular economy” laws, reporting to the environment minister. B.C. recyclers deal directly with Environment Ministry officials, developing fiveyear road maps for system improvement agreed upon by the province, industry and municipalities. Recyclers risk ministry fines if they break the rules.
B.C. also has one “producer responsibility organization” (PRO), a collective of industry partners, per type of material collected. Ontario has multiple PROs per collected material, sometimes making different decisions, as seen in Ontario’s troubled tire recycling program.
He said Ontarians should see a mostly seamless transition with an expanded list of recyclables including black plastics, hot drink containers, toothpaste tubes and ice cream tubs. It’s industry that must grapple with extra cost and red tape, he added.
Some environmentalists, however, are pointing the finger at Circular Materials and its wasteproducing members for Ontario’s troublesome transition to date and potential problems ahead.
The Ford government announced in 2021 that corporations making packaging waste would, over three years starting in 2023, fully assume the operations and cost of recycling from the municipal patchwork of systems and services partly funded by industry.
Ontario’s thenenvironment minister Jeff Yurek predicted the switch would see more material recycled rather than go to landfill. About half of the waste currently collected by the city goes to landfill. Toronto officials at the time forecast annual savings of $15 million for the cashstrapped city, thanks to not having to collect and/or process blue bin contents as well as other recyclables, including hazardous waste such as paint and batteries.
Early on, however, recycling experts called the province’s plan a madeinOntario mishmash so indecipherable they doubted the transition could launch in 2023. The Ford government tabled reforms but controversy and policy reversals continued.
Last June, the Environment Ministry proposed killing its plan to add blue box recycling to apartments, condos, longtermcare and retirement homes that previously had private pickup. It also proposed a fiveyear delay in forcing waste producers to recycle materials from receptacles in public spaces.
The Ford government said it needed to reduce the burden on industry. Municipal officials predicted an avalanche of extra waste to landfill.
Final regulations published in September delay by five years — rather than cancel — requirements to expand blue box into multiresidential buildings not currently in the municipal recycling system. Also, a muchcriticized proposal to suspend some of industry’s recycling targets for five years was reduced to a twoyear grace period for waste producers to make “best efforts” to hit targets before facing potential fines.
The Ford government stuck to its plan, however, to relieve producers of responsibility for publicspace recycling collection and processing, putting the cost on municipalities, including Toronto, which now expects to annually save only $10 million from the recycling transition.
Emily Alfred, a senior campaigner at Toronto Environmental Alliance, told the Star that adopting B.C. recycling practices won’t fix an Ontario system heading for major waste woes.
Ontario municipalities are pushing to accelerate and expand the recycling transition, she said in an email, while “Circular Materials, along with producers, have done a lot of advocacy to narrow the scope and slow down Ontario’s regulations, which is the main cause of the problems, along with ongoing changes that have made it impossible for municipalities to plan.”
Residents are learning what they can put in their bin and who is picking it up, Alfred said, “but the bigger issue is that this is part of a systematic erosion of recycling and all waste programs in Ontario.
“We’re expecting the new blue box system in Ontario is going to be a disaster.”
Alfred pointed to the province reducing its initial recycling targets and allowing producers to count the incineration of some materials toward 15 per cent of recycling targets.
Ashley Wallis, associate director of Environmental Defence, said there are drawbacks to the B.C. system compared to Ontario’s — if the new system is allowed to operate properly.
Having the RPRA as an arm’slength enforcement agency is important to ensuring impartiality, as opposed to B.C.’s streamlined system that makes the environment minister “complicit in the producers’ approach,” she said in an email.
Even though they’ve stopped being responsible for recycling, local governments expect to get an earful from residents if things go wrong.
Toronto officials recently urged people to not call 311 if they have a blue bin problem, instead to reach out to Circular Materials, which will have a customer service line open only weekdays and not all day, with afterhours callers being invited to leave a message.
One potential point of confusion is the recycling collection schedule. Curbside collection days remain the same in Toronto, Wednesday or Thursday, depending on where you live.
However some residents in the old City of Toronto will see a switch in the alternating order of recycling and garbage pickup. Affected residents received notices of the change, which is also on the city’s website.
The city says it has been working with Circular Materials since 2023 to make the switch as painless as possible, while noting “service gaps,” such as the city having to pick up recyclables from park bins and the delay in servicing all multiresidential buildings.
“The city is working to fill these gaps, where possible, so recycling access and customer service remains strong,” said city spokesperson Krystal Carter.
Aurora was among municipalities to complain when residents were told they had to take hulking 95gallon recycling bins.
Mayor Tom Mrakas said they have since been offered 65gallon bins, but those are still difficult for some people to handle. Mrakas also said local governments have had to solve such problems and shoulder the task of keeping residents informed.
“A stronger and earlier communications effort by Circular Materials would have gone a long way in easing this transition for residents,” Mrakas said, adding that the Ford government has been receptive and responsive to his feedback.
Gary Wheeler, a spokesperson for Ontario Environment Minister Todd McCarthy, said regulations to guide the transition were introduced after “extensive consultation” with municipalities and waste producers, noting that, for the first time, the same recyclables will be collected provincewide.
Circular Materials will work closely with communities to ensure a smooth transition, he said, while the RPRA will “closely monitor implementation to ensure that producers fulfil all regulated requirements.”
This opinion was written by Shawn Barber and was published in the Globe & Mail on January 5, 2025. Shawn Barber is a retired foreign-service officer and ambassador. He is the former head of the economic security task force at Public Safety Canada.
We must continue to diversify the markets for our crude exports
The removal of Nicolás Maduro by U.S. forces Saturday morning ended one of the Western Hemisphere’s longest running political standoffs – and opened a question with direct consequences for Canada’s economic security.
If the Venezuelan oil sector, with the help of U.S. energy giants, can be revitalized so that Venezuela once again becomes a major heavy-crude exporter, what will the implications be for Canada’s oil patch?
Canada’s role as the largest energy supplier to the U.S. market is unlikely to be threatened in the short to medium term by the events now unfolding in Venezuela. But the potential for those events to reshape U.S. oil markets in the long term is real. For a trading nation like Canada, protecting our economic security means this is a risk we cannot ignore.
During the late 1990s, it was Venezuela, not Canada, that was the largest exporter of crude oil to the United States. For decades, it supplied the heavy, sulfur-rich oil to U.S. refineries needed to produce diesel, asphalt and other industrial fuels.
In fact, many of the refineries on the U.S. Gulf Coast and in the Midwest to which Canadian heavy crude is now sent were originally built to process oil from Venezuela.
The rise of the Chavez/Maduro regime starting in 1999 brought about U.S. sanctions on Venezuela which, together with mismanagement and a lack of investment, sent oil production, and with it exports to the U.S., into steep decline. While it has the world’s largest oil reserves, today Venezuela exports only about one million barrels a day, most of which is sold to China.
Can Venezuela once again become a major player in global oil markets? U.S. President Donald Trump thinks so. “We’re going to have our very large United States oil companies – the biggest anywhere in the world – go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure, and start making money for the country,” Mr. Trump said on Saturday.
Oil is our single largest export earner. Could rising volumes of Venezuelan heavy oil extracted and exported by U.S. energy giants see Canada’s U.S. market share decline?
So far, the U.S. oil majors haven’t exactly jumped on the bandwagon. The only U.S. company still pumping oil in Venezuela is Chevron, which resumed shipments of Venezuelan crude to Gulf Coast refineries in 2023. Even it has been non-committal.
If we assume, and that’s a big if, that the U.S. is going to run things in Venezuela for the foreseeable future, it’s reasonable to expect that sanctions will be lifted and the regulatory and investment regime will be made friendly to U.S. companies.
But will the country be stable enough to attract the billions of dollars of investment needed to rebuild its capacity to be a major producer? Even if it did it, how quickly could it get there?
Some estimates suggest that a return to a pre-sanctions level production of two to 2.5-million barrels a day might be possible after four to five years of sustained investment. Under that scenario, what are the stakes for Canada?
According to the Canada Energy Regulator, in 2024 crude oil accounted for about $140-billion in Canadian exports, most of which went to the United States. Oil is our single largest export earner. Could rising volumes of Venezuelan heavy oil extracted and exported by U.S. energy giants see Canada’s U.S. market share decline?
At least in the short term, the principal impact is likely to be downward pressure on the price Canada heavy crude can command in the U.S. market. Canadian producers with narrow margins would be most exposed.
The highest risk would be that U.S. Gulf Coast refineries begin to shift to cheaper Venezuelan crude. U.S. Midwestern refineries are more integrated with Canadian pipeline supplies and have less flexible sourcing, making the penetration of Venezuelan crude at scale unlikely.
While a key Canadian advantage will continue to be our reputation as a reliable, low-risk supplier, Venezuelan crude discounted to regain U.S. market share could be a real threat. So how do we manage the risk to our largest export sector?
We must continue to diversify the markets for our crude oil. This might mean more urgency for a second pipeline to tidewater, even if downward price pressure on crude might make the economics of another pipeline even more challenging than it appears now.
In a more competitive market scenario, cost discipline will also be key if price discounts widen between Canadian and Venezuelan crude. Finally, longer-term partnerships and contracts with U.S. refineries become more important in a more competitive U.S. oil market.
This article was written by Kate Helmore and was published in the Globe & Mail on January 5, 2025.
Incentives are intended to keep Canada’s clean fuel competitive with U.S. imports
The first part of Ottawa’s strategy to boost biofuels and shore up domestic demand for canola came into force on Jan 1.
The $370-million Biofuel Production Incentive will be given to biofuel producers over the next two years. A fuel producer could receive a maximum of $40.2-million a year.
The subsidies are intended to keep Canada’s clean fuel competitive with U.S. imports, whose producers receive hefty tax credits. Ottawa’s payouts are also intended to shore up demand for the Canadian crops used as feedstock in clean fuel, especially beleaguered canola, which has faced a 75.8-per-cent duty on canola seed levied by Beijing since August. China is the largest market for Canadian canola seed.
The incentives are the first part of a two-stage strategy announced in September. Environment and Climate Change Canada is also reviewing its Clean Fuel Regulations (CFRs), with changes expected to come into force in about two years.
“This represents a significant undertaking by the federal government,” said Fred Ghatala, president of Advanced Biofuels Canada. “It represents a speed of action to put a necessary program in place and longer-term vision to have our sector transition from survival to thrive mode.”
Canada’s CFRs came into force in 2023. As part of the regulations, fuels that measure below the carbon-intensity mandate earn credits, and the lower the intensity, the more credits earned.
At full output, Canada’s biofuels sector would generate more than $18-billion a year in economic activity and support 30,000 jobs, according to Advanced Biofuels Canada.
However, biofuel producers have been in “survival mode” since then U.S. president Joe Biden launched the 45Z Clean Fuel Production Credit in 2022, said Mr. Ghatala. Armed with this incentive, clean fuel imports from the U.S. are outcompeting domestic products in the Canadian market. The 45Z was expanded last July as part of President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill.
“This has been a freight train coming at our sector since,” said Mr. Ghatala.
The new Canadian incentive does not put Canadian producers on equal footing, he added, but it will help maintain some degree of competitiveness until ECCC finalizes changes to the CFRs.
Fuel producers will be paid on a quarterly basis. They will receive 16 cents per litre on the first 170 million litres of eligible production, and then 10 cents a litre on the 130 million litres produced after that.
This is good news for Canadian canola farmers, said Andre Harpe. In 2024, $4.9-billion of canola was sold to China. Beijing’s tariffs in August sank prices for farmers and slashed exports. The biofuel industry cannot absorb the loss of the Chinese market, but the incentive does play an important role in shoring up domestic demand, said Mr. Harpe.
“Any time canola is going to get used domestically it is a good thing. This is a good start.”
However, the incentives are only the first step, said Mr. Harpe. The most important part is the changes to the Clean Fuel Regulations.
In 2024, 73 per cent of CFR credits from low-carbon fuel support were generated by imports in 2024. A significant source of clean fuel feedstock is used cooking oil that is imported from markets in Asia.
To help Canada’s beleaguered canola sector, the CFRs need to prioritize domestic feedstocks, said Mr. Harpe. For example, according to the Canadian Oilseed Processors Association, a policy to curb imports of cooking oil so canola could capture just half of the Canadian market would use 2.5 million tonnes of canola seed, 42 per cent of the total volume exported to China in 2024.
Two main policies are being evaluated by ECCC, according to a discussion paper unveiled in December. One would require fuel producers to use a minimum amount of domestic feedstock. The other approach would place more value on domestic feedstock by giving low-carbon fuels produced using domestic feedstock more credits per litre.
The comment period for CFR amendments closes Jan. 15.
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