Thousands still without power after Monday’s storm
This article was written by the Canadian Press and was published in the Toronto Star on December 31, 2025.
People in parts of Ontario and Quebec were dealing with more messy weather and in some cases blizzardlike conditions on Tuesday as storm fronts continue to hit the area.
Environment Canada warned of nearzero visibility at times in bursts of heavy snow as squalls blew through parts of northern Ontario and west of Toronto.
Large snowfall amounts were expected in a wide swath of southwestern Ontario through Wednesday afternoon that could exceed 50 centimetres by Thursday morning in parts of Huron County and other regions.
Several highways around Timmins, Ont., remained closed Tuesday morning after Monday’s heavy snowfall in the region and ongoing blowing snow advisories. The city also issued an extreme cold weather alert as wind chill temperatures are expected to drop to 28 C overnight.
A winter storm Monday brought freezing rain, blowing snow and strong winds across Eastern Canada that knocked out power to tens of thousands of people in Ontario.
According to Hydro One utility’s outage map, thousands in the province were still without electricity as of Tuesday afternoon.
Meanwhile, Environment Canada says some areas northeast of Quebec City and into northern New Brunswick could see between 15 and 40 centimetres of snow along with high winds.
In Quebec’s far north, blizzard conditions were expected to persist at least until midday on Thursday.
Much of Canada has been blasted with a number of weather systems over the past week, ranging from blizzards and cold snaps to freezing rain.
The weather has caused flight delays and cancellations at airports in Montreal, Halifax and elsewhere during the holiday travel period.
This article was written by Mike Hager and was published in the Globe & Mail on December 31, 2025.
Atmospheric river washes out highway on the archipelago off B.C.’s north coast
Just an hour after Chris Ashurst finished a morning of frigid crosscountry skiing, an atmospheric river descended upon Haida Gwaii from the south, swinging the temperature 15 degrees “almost into T-shirt weather” and setting off a massive melt that nearly led to calamity on the craggy archipelago off B.C.’s north coast.
That was Sunday morning. By the evening, Mr. Ashurst, a volunteer emergency co-ordinator for the North Coast Regional District, was one of more than 2,000 residents stranded on the north half of the main island when the lone highway was washed out by a flood.
The provincial government and local First Nations leaders said Tuesday afternoon that the rains had let up enough for repairs to begin on the main coastal highway and a single lane reopened later in the evening.
The authorities had prepared to install a temporary bridge over the washed out portion, but water levels dropped enough Tuesday for them to begin to install a culvert.
However, for more than two days, the north end of the main island was cut off from the southern half, which is home to the ferry and airport that transport people, food and fuel from the mainland.
Mr. Ashurst and his partner had planned to catch a ferry Monday morning for a ski trip on the mainland. They set out in their pick-up truck at 5:30 a.m. to take a logging road that curled around the island to the ferry terminal in Skidegate, but a kilometre onto the path they stopped at a puddle nearly half a metre deep.
Then, a logger in a bigger truck backed up toward them and said the path ahead had fallen trees and water flowing across it at double that depth.
“He was like, ‘nobody’s going that way,’ so we went back,” Mr. Ashurst said.
No major injuries were reported during the flooding and aftermath, though the emergency room in the north side’s largest community of more than 2,000 people, Masset, has been shutting down periodically because of staffing shortages.
Still, two days of being severed from civilization tested residents on the north half of the island, with stores being emptied of dairy and other essentials and the region surviving on one functioning gas pump, Mr. Ashurst said.
“We get zero groceries up here without the road – it all comes on the ferry – so I’m not going to town. We’re going to eat the food in our pantry until this all passes,” Mr. Ashurst added. He has lived outside Masset for 22 years.
No properties have had to be evacuated, but roughly 10 families stranded from getting to their homes by the flooding are being given vouchers for food and, in some cases, accommodation, according the provincial Emergency Management and Climate Readiness Ministry.
On Dec. 27, the Ministry of Water, Land and Resource Stewardship issued a flood warning for Haida Gwaii and the region surrounding the north coast port city of Prince Rupert, with up to 15 centimetres of rain expected through Monday.
Billy Yovanovich, Chief Councillor of the Skidegate Band Council, said members in the southern part of the main island were also helping house their northern neighbours in need.
His elected council oversees the village of Skidegate in the south and another council oversees Masset in the north, both working within the governance structures of the wider Haida Nation.
“It is just such an extreme oneoff, both communities have been really helpful,” he said.
Mr. Yovanovich said his main concern with flooding is the ongoing erosion of Haida Gwaii’s shores, which his nation is trying to fight through various projects.
Yet, his biggest takeaway from the past few days is that everyone on the ground co-operated beautifully, a fact he says may surprise some convinced that reconciliation in B.C. with Indigenous people has gone awry after recent court rulings on competing property rights.
He noted that this fall the B.C. Supreme Court cemented the Haida Nation’s agreement with federal and provincial governments to take over Aboriginal title to all one million hectares of Haida Gwaii, once known as the Queen Charlotte Islands.
“We’re still able to coexist: Nothing’s going to change that way. We’ll still all work together during crises and during day-today living,” he said.
Paramedics report having to clear ice and snow to get some people safely loaded into ambulances
This article was written by Morgan Lowrie and was published in the Toronto Star on December 30, 2025.
A winter storm brought freezing rain, blowing snow and strong winds across Eastern Canada on Monday, leading to a surge in 911 calls in Montreal.
Montrealarea ambulance service Urgencessanté said that for a period on Monday morning it received some 100 calls per hour — many for people who had fallen and hurt themselves on icecoated sidewalks.
Spokesperson Valérie Guertin urged people to stay home if possible, and if they had to go outside, she advised them to wear crampons and adapt their driving to the weather.
“Ambulance requests (are) mostly for falls on the ice, traumatic injuries or people with injuries following a fall,” she said in a phone interview.
By afternoon, another spokesperson, Alexandre Sapone, said the call volume had dropped slightly to between 60 and 70 calls per hour, compared to between 40 and 50 in normal times.
Sapone said that in addition to a rise in 911 calls, crews were facing challenges around loading people safely onto ambulances — sometimes requiring paramedics to clear entrances of snow and ice and spread salt or other abrasives on the ground.
Much of southern and western Quebec were under weather alerts for prolonged periods of freezing rain with ice pellets.
And while most of those alerts had been lifted by late afternoon, some areas remained under wind warnings, including Montreal where gusts of up to 90 kilometres per hour were expected.
Vast swaths of the province were also under winter storm warnings, with regions such as Saguenay, Lac StJean and Lower St. Lawrence expecting some 20 to 30 centimetres of snow along with strong winds.
More than 12,000 HydroQuébec clients were without power as of 6 p.m., including some 9,700 homes and businesses in the Laurentians area north of Montreal.
Meteorologist Eric Tomlinson said the precipitation had largely shifted to regular rain by late morning in Montreal — leaving behind five to 10 millimetres of ice — but that freezing rain continued to fall north of the city. He warned that the temperature was expected to drop sharply during the night, which could once again turn surfaces slippery.
Freezing rain, blowing snow and strong winds were in the forecast for many parts of Eastern Canada, from Ontario to Newfoundland and Labrador.
Freezing rain warnings were issued in all four Atlantic provinces, including parts of Newfoundland and Labrador where between 50 to 100 cm of snow has fallen since Christmas Day. Newfoundland Power reported more than 2,500 customers without power Monday morning, mostly along the southwest coast of the Avalon Peninsula.
Environment Canada meteorologist Ian Hubbard said Atlantic Canada is in the path of the same system that brought freezing rain to the Great Lakes region and parts of Quebec, but the impacts won’t be as severe since some of the precipitation would likely fall as rain.
This article was written by Ron Bousso and was published in the Globe & Mail on December 30, 2025.
Pumpjacks draw out oil and gas on a frosty day near Carstairs, Alta., in February. Global oil output has surged over the past year. The U.S. – the world’s biggest oil producer – ramped up production, as did Canada and Brazil.
IEA predicts oil supply will exceed demand, while OPEC analysts see largely balanced market
Energy markets enter 2026 in a downbeat mood as geopolitical uncertainty clouds the outlook and increasing signs of swelling oil and gas supplies threaten to sink prices.
This past year was a wild one for the oil and gas industry, punctuated by the 12-day Israel-Iran war in June, U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade wars, the intensified targeting of energy infrastructure in Russia in its war against Ukraine, OPEC’s often perplexing production decisions and the recently threatened U.S. blockade of Venezuela.
So what’s in store for next year? Here are five trends likely to shape the energy landscape in 2026 and beyond.
THE YEAR OF THE GLUT?
Investors will keep a razor-sharp focus on signs of swelling oil inventories next year after crude prices fell nearly 20 per cent in 2025 to about US$60 a barrel on fears of significant oversupply.
Global oil output has surged over the past year. The U.S. – the world’s biggest oil producer – ramped up production, as did Canada and Brazil, while the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies including Russia, a group known as OPEC+, reversed years of cuts.
The International Energy Agency forecasts supply will exceed demand in 2026 by a headspinning 3.85 million barrels a day (b/d), the equivalent of around 4 per cent of global demand.
Yet OPEC analysts see a largely balanced market next year, creating one of the sharpest forecast divergences in decades. Uncertainty about the supply-demand balance has been compounded by China’s large-scale crude stockpiling since April. Traders have limited visibility about these volumes, though they are estimated to be sizable at roughly 500,000 b/d, according to Reuters calculations.
Ultimately, the IEA looks more likely to be proven correct. According to Kpler data, oil being transported or stored on tankers has risen in recent weeks to its highest point since April, 2020, when consumption cratered owing to COVID-19 lockdowns. Such elevated seaborne stocks suggest onshore inventories may soon start filling, adding further downward pressure on prices.
THE LNG WAVE IS COMING
Demand for liquefied natural gas has surged in recent years, particularly as Europe has sought to rapidly replace the huge volumes of Russian pipeline gas it imported before Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
The boom generated enormous profits for LNG producers and traders, but that may not be the case moving forward as global export capacity ramps up.
Between 2025 and 2030, new LNG export capacity is expected to grow by 300 billion cubic metres a year, a 50-per-cent jump, according to the IEA, with around 45 per cent coming from the U.S., the world’s biggest exporter of the fuel.
Supply is set to outpace demand growth over the same period, squeezing producers’ margins and offering consumers in Europe and Asia some relief. Rising U.S. natural gas prices pose another headache for producers.
Still, producers have some reason for optimism. As LNG prices decline in 2026 and beyond, this power source will become increasingly competitive with lower-cost options such as oil and coal, potentially boosting demand for the superchilled fuel.
DIESEL OUTPERFORMANCE PERSISTS
Diesel profit margins have risen this year, gaining steam in the last six months as the refined product market faced supply constraints even as the world is increasingly awash with crude oil.
Benchmark European diesel refining margins rose 30 per cent in 2025, compared with a 20-percent drop in Brent crude prices in 2025, according to LSEG data.
That’s largely owing to a string of Ukrainian drone attacks on Russian refineries and oil terminals, which led to a decline in diesel exports in late 2025, as well as the EU decision to ban imports of fuels made from Russian crude oil.
This trend is expected to continue through 2026, since there is relatively little new refining capacity coming online. A peace deal in Ukraine would alter the calculus but likely offer only limited relief.
BIG OIL EXPECTS BRIGHTER FUTURE
Oil and gas companies are bracing for strong headwinds in 2026. Chevron Corp., Exxon Mobil Corp. and TotalEnergies have all lowered spending plans for next year by around 10 per cent and announced deep cost cuts. At the same time, the oil majors appear quite bullish about the longerterm outlook. They are spending more on exploration and investments in new projects that will come online later this decade or in the early 2030s. Major Middle East oil producers, including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, are also gearing up for a new era of upstream investments.
This long-term bullishness may prompt Western oil majors – most of which boast solid balance sheets and relatively low debt, with BP PLC a notable exception – to use the expected 2026 downturn to gobble up struggling rivals.
RENEWABLES DOWN BUT NOT OUT
In October, the IEA slashed its global forecast for renewable power growth through 2030 by one-fifth, or 248 gigawatts, compared with last year’s outlook, citing weaker prospects in the U.S. and China.
Global renewable capacity is now expected to rise by 4,600 GW by 2030, with solar accounting for roughly 80 per cent of the increase.
Even so, demand for electricity is expected to grow by 4 per cent a year by 2027, driven by power-hungry data centres and the broader electrification of economies, even as governments and companies may slow energy transition plans in the name of energy security.
This tension is set to dominate the world’s power markets in 2026 and beyond, particularly as the costs of solar, wind and battery storage are expected to keep falling.
This article was written by Lawrence Ulrich and was published in the Globe & Mail on December 29, 2025.
A newer model Toyota Prius is displayed at the Canadian International AutoShow in Toronto in February. Toyota played up testimonials from stars, such as Leonardo DiCaprio and Meryl Streep, that helped sales boom from 5,500 in 2001, the year the Prius was first sold, to a peak of 236,000 in 2012.
The 2001 model kicked off an era of hybrids and built the automaker’s reputation as the global leader in green cars
In a different world, an electric vehicle would be just another car. But in today’s hyperpartisan climate, battery-powered cars carry not just passengers but a punishing load of political and cultural baggage.
Supporters may view electric cars as heroes, helping halt climate change or making American automakers more competitive around the world. But others see in them the heavy hand of government, pressuring consumers to ditch gasoline whether they are ready to or not. Throw in Elon Musk and his highly charged social media commentary, and even loyalists of his car company, Tesla, may no longer know whom or what to believe in.
“EVs have become such a partisan thing that they’re not defined as cars,” said Mike Murphy, a Republican strategist who leads the EV Politics Project and EVs for All America, which aim to make electric cars less political. “It’s like we’re having political fights over toasters.”
To industry experts, the seeds of this poisonous debate may have been planted inadvertently 25 years ago, with a humble, shoe-box-shaped sedan: the Toyota Prius. The groundbreaking 2001 Prius kicked off an era of gas-electric hybrids and built Toyota’s reputation as the global leader in green cars.
Mr. Murphy said Toyota had used marketing that implied that buying a Prius was a way to save the planet. That excited liberals, but drew a strong backlash from people less attuned to environmental issues. Nissan made a similar choice with the Leaf, its electric vehicle, in 2010, he said. In one Nissan TV ad, a polar bear hugged a Leaf owner.
“Climate shouldn’t be polarized, but in America it is,” said Mr. Murphy, who worked for Arnold Schwarzenegger and Mitt Romney. “So when you market vehicles for green virtues, others see it as pushy dogma. Then you’re stuck in politics.”
Imported from Japan, the 2001 Prius arrived when many Americans were switching to sport utility vehicles. Average fuel economy for the 2001 model year had fallen to a 21-year low, at 20.4 m/g. The Prius came bearing a green olive branch; federal testing showed that it could travel 48 m/g.
Margo Oge bought one of the first Priuses. Later, as an official at the Environmental Protection Agency, she would become the chief architect of fuel-economy standards enacted under the Obama administration in 2010.
“The Prius was just this cool little car to save you money and protect us from air pollution,” Ms. Oge said. “The government didn’t ask for or require Toyota to develop this tech. It wasn’t seen as a mandate as EVs later were.”
Unlike electric vehicles, which use no gasoline, Ms. Oge said, the hybrid Toyota should have been less threatening to industries like oil and ethanol, or to consumers.
Even so, some critics attacked Prius fans for engaging in virtue signalling, being hypocritical or wanting to impose nanny-state policies. In 2001, an article in Car and Driver magazine praised the Prius’ engineering, but noted that its testers managed to get only 35 m/g.
“It can be no surprise that Toyota Motor Corp. enjoys its share of adulation from the Sierra Club, from Washington, D.C., windbags and from everyone else who conveniently forgets about the five models of sport utilities and two models of pickups also peddled in Toyota dealerships,” the article said.
Toyota played up testimonials from stars, such as Leonardo DiCaprio and Meryl Streep, who publicly adopted the Prius. Sales boomed from 5,500 in 2001 to a peak of 236,000 in 2012.
Red-carpet appearances helped make the Prius a hit, Mr. Murphy said, but at a lingering cost. To some, hybrids and electric cars became vehicles for coastal liberals and do-gooders, not “mainstream” Americans. In 2006, South Park called hybrids the nation’s “leading cause of smug.”
But if the Prius attracted gibes, the Chevrolet Volt became a certified punching bag.
That model, a plug-in hybrid sedan, won top car awards. It also became inextricably linked to federal aid for General Motors. To some, the Volt was a fourwheeled symbol for “Government Motors” or “Obama Motors.” President Barack Obama sat in a Volt at its Detroit factory in 2010 and said he would buy one after he left office.
Mr. Obama and his EPA also sought to double the fuel economy of the average new car to about 50 mpg. Politicians assailed the Volt as a socialist scheme to force Americans into electric cars.
Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., accused the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration of conspiring to hide a Volt defect.
“I’m a free-enterprise guy,” Mr. Issa said. “And the Volt insults a lot of us with being a demo project funded by edict.”
Robert Lutz, a former Marine fighter pilot and the outspoken vice chair of GM – who once derided global warming – publicly defended the car.
“The problem with conservatives is getting them to accept that an electric car is not necessarily a left-wing environmental plot,” Mr. Lutz, a Republican, said in 2012 before Mr. Obama was reelected. “We’ll probably see the Volt as a political football through November, and then it’ll go away.”
If only. Electric vehicles became even more political as Tesla began its rise with the release of the Model S in 2012.
Though Mr. Musk, the CEO of Tesla, is now a conservative star, many on the right previously attacked his company for earning billions by selling climate credits to other automakers, a windfall enabled by government policy. The company also received a federal loan, which it paid back early.
Of course, many businesses receive government support. Oil and gas companies enjoy many tax breaks, some going back decades.
Mr. Lutz, now retired, said he knew many “staunch Republicans” who drove and loved electric cars. The end of federal policies to encourage their sales and discourage the use of gasoline, he said, can ease some objections. Shorter charging times, he said, more than politics, may persuade more drivers to choose electric cars.
“EVs will progress more slowly now, but they will just continue to gain market share until they are by far the dominant technology,” he said.
Mr. Lutz, 93, owns a pair of electric Cadillacs, the Lyriq and the Escalade IQ. He recently got a Corvette ZR1, a gasoline sports car with 1,064 horsepower and a 233 mph top speed. Yet Mr. Lutz believes internal-combustion engines, after 120 years of development, have nearly reached their technical peak. Electric cars are just getting started.
“When you drive them, there’s just no contest,” he said. “They’re better, they’re faster, they’re quieter, with fewer moving parts.”
In a bitter turn for Toyota, Tesla’s ascent turned the Japanese company, once an environmental hero, into an ostensible villain. Toyota, Ms. Oge noted, lobbied against pro-electric vehicle policies in several countries.
Now, as sales of electric cars have cooled, Toyota and its hybrids are back in vogue. Other automakers are rushing to offer more hybrids, and the cars are rarely attacked by politicians or in popular culture.
Tesla did not respond to a request for comment. Toyota and GM declined to comment.
The decades of pitched battles have culminated in President Donald Trump’s fulsome attacks against electric cars. That includes a bid to unwind former president Joe Biden’s signature climate and energy legislation and regulations. The Biden administration’s policies would have effectively required automakers to sharply increase sales of electric and hybrid cars in the coming years.
Mr. Biden’s policies, which included a US$7,500 federal tax credit for the purchase or lease of electric vehicles, helped lift sales. But Ms. Oge said his fuel economy and emission regulations were a “political overreach” that turned many car owners, not just Republicans, against them.
“The Biden administration lost control of that message, completely,” she said. “It became ‘The government wants you to buy this car.’”
But if the Biden administration’s rules were too ambitious, Ms. Oge said, the Trump administration is aiming to make them even weaker than those put in place by Obama 15 years ago.
With political temperatures hot enough to fry a battery, Mr. Murphy said he advised automakers to eschew controversy. They should not tout electric cars’ environmental benefits, he said, because people either know about them or don’t base buying decisions on them. Automakers should instead lead with the models’ zesty performance, hushed interiors, energy savings, easy maintenance or new technology.
“These cars can win a fair fight as vehicles for most people,” he said.
In his groups’ November survey of the public’s views about electric vehicles, 48 per cent of self-identified Republicans held an unfavorable view of these cars, versus 22 per cent of independents and 14 per cent of Democrats. Conservative opposition has softened somewhat, Mr. Murphy said. He added that 40 per cent of respondents identified as Republican.
“So if automakers can’t crack the Republican consumer market,” he said, “EVs will never become as big as we need.”
This article was written by Aya Diab and was published in the Globe & Mail on December 29, 2025.
It feels simple: You shop, find something you want and click to buy. It shows up today, overnight or tomorrow. We’ve gotten used to that speed. But that convenience comes with a climate cost.
Multiple factors shape the environmental toll of a delivery. These include the distance from a fulfilment centre, whether the shipment rides in a half-empty truck, how many trips a driver makes in the same area and the type of transportation used to move the package.
When customers choose faster shipping and earlier delivery dates, the system shifts from optimized routing to whatever gets the package out fastest, and that means higher emissions, said Sreedevi Rajagopalan, a research scientist at MIT’s Center for Transportation and Logistics. For example, trucks may leave warehouses before they’re full and drivers might loop the same neighbourhood multiple times a day, she said.
“For the same demand, fast shipping definitely increases emissions 10 to 12 per cent,” she said.
To meet tight delivery windows, retailers may rely on air freight, which produces far more emissions than other options such as trains, making it the most carbon-intensive.
“Given that companies want to be competitive in terms of speed, it comes at the cost of your efficiency,” Ms. Sreedevi said. “Vans are half full, and you make multiple rounds, multiple trips to the same location … your fuel consumption goes up, and you’re not able to consolidate.”
One way companies such as Amazon.com Inc. try to minimize that is by placing their supply chain closer to customers to reduce mileage and improve speed for the customer. Their goal is to make the journey fast and effective, but reduce its emissions at the same time.
“By really leveraging our supply chain efficiencies that we have at scale, we’re able to both offer better speed and sustainability outcomes at the same time,” said Chris Atkins, director of Worldwide Operations Sustainability at Amazon.
Getting items to customers’ doors from a fulfilment centre – referred to as the “last mile” or “last kilometre” of shipping – is one of the hardest stages to make less polluting, Ms. Sreedevi said.
Emissions rise even more when customers place multiple small orders throughout the week.
“If I place an order this morning and then I place an order this evening and choose fast shipping, the company might have already processed my morning order and wouldn’t wait for my evening order to consolidate,” she said.
And sending more half-full trucks out on the road means more trips overall. “Imagine you’re not only sending a half-full truck, you’re also bringing back that truck empty. … Emissions are going to go up,” Ms. Sreedevi said.
Consumers can lower emissions if they’re willing to wait even a tiny bit, and they’ll save money at the same time, said Christopher Faires, assistant professor of logistics and supply chain management at Georgia Southern University.
Delaying delivery by one to two days can result in a 36-per-cent reduction in carbon-dioxide emissions, and three to four days pushes that reduction to 56 per cent, so opting for standard or delayed shipping instead of next-day or two-day shipping helps, according to Ms. Sreedevi.
Amazon’s Mr. Atkins said changes to their network are cutting emissions linked to fast delivery. The company has expanded the use of electric delivery vans and shifted more packages to rail and to delivering by foot or bicycle in dense cities.
“Aviation is very carbon-intensive relative to ground shipping,” said Mr. Atkins. “One of the other things that Amazon and other logistics companies are looking at doing is: How do we mode-shift to less carbon intensive forms of transportation?”
Amazon says providing shipping options that encourage customers to consolidate orders have also helped. Data for the first nine months of 2025 shows that when customers chose a single delivery day for all items, it reduced more than 300 million delivery stops and avoided 100,000 tons of carbon emissions, according to Mr. Atkins. People are more likely to delay or consolidate orders once they understand the environmental impact of fast shipping, according to Ms. Sreedevi, who coauthored a 2024 study of delivery customers in Mexico.
“A significant number of consumers decided to wait for longer delivery or delayed their shipping when we showed them the environmental impact information in the form of trees,” said Ms. Sreedevi. “So it’s important that they are educated.”
While fast shipping isn’t likely to go away, experts say its climate impacts can be meaningfully reduced through small behaviour shifts, both from shoppers and companies. Bundling orders, skipping the overnight option and choosing a single weekly delivery can all make a difference.
This article was written by Jeffrey Jones and was published in the Globe & Mail on December 29, 2025.
A storm of new business risks and a shift in government investment priorities have converged to force a rewrite of what ESG is, and even what it should be called.
The concepts of environmental, social and governance – once a hot market trend – have long been the target of a backlash in the United States. MAGA Republicans, especially, decried them as “wokeism” that held companies and investors back from their main objective – making money.
But this year, simultaneous geopolitical and trade disruptions and crises affecting Canada have prompted experts to assert that the triptych, as it has been known, is being forced to evolve.
Climate change is still intensifying weather-related disasters, and Canadian companies are still tallying the environmental and social risks to their businesses. But now, other concerns outside the traditional ESG realm have entered the discussion.
So, what will ESG become? As a capital-markets veteran, Milla Craig, chief executive officer of Montreal-based ESG consultancy Millani Inc., lived through the fallout from 9/11, U.S. bank mergers, the financial crisis and other disruptions. They showed that nothing remains static, Ms. Craig said.
“You can sit and hold on to your views and your opinions, or you adapt. And I think that there’s a bit of reckoning right now. There’s a phase as things grow and come to a marketplace,” she said. “Now, there’s a pragmatism.”
She argues that ESG now encompasses items that have not traditionally been included, such as energy security and economics, affordability, a focus on sovereignty among Indigenous nations and Canada’s Arctic, as well as cybersecurity and artificial intelligence.
“I don’t care if you call it ESG. These are business issues. These are topics that are being focused on by capital markets. It feels like it’s actually the mainstreaming of all the things that lay out within ESG, but they’re just becoming what a board needs to be looking at. It’s part of the materiality,” Ms. Craig said.
As an ESG and sustainable-infrastructure analyst, Baltej Sidhu has noted the expansion of what fits into ESG and has predicted that the label’s days are numbered.
Mr. Sidhu, of National Bank Financial, said sustainable investing in some cases no longer excludes the defence industry, for instance, or the materials that go into its armaments, as security concerns grip parts of the world. This took hold after Russia invaded Ukraine, he said. Some of those materials are also used for green technology.
“In the past few years, we’ve seen an evolution of what ESG is and what ESG isn’t,” he said.
“At the outset, it was very green, and I think it’s widened its breadth and scope.”
The risk-management tools developed within ESG for climate and societal issues are now ingrained in business culture, even if the acronym fades away, he said.
This evolution is not happening in a vacuum. Domestically, government priorities have shifted, as Prime Minister Mark Carney pushes to get major industrial projects built to blunt the impact of U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariff war.
Mr. Carney, previously one of the foremost exponents of climate finance, has pledged to loosen or scrap a number of the previous government’s decarbonization regulations as part of a memorandum of understanding with Alberta, which wants a new oil pipeline to the West Coast. As a quid pro quo, Alberta must strengthen its industrial carbon pricing.
Yrjo Koskinen, professor of sustainable and transition finance at the University of Calgary’s Haskayne School of Business, believes carbon pricing remains the best tool for reducing carbon emissions, even if those moves over all have upset environmentalists.
Yet companies are still embracing the principles of ESG for managing risk, and collecting the metrics, if they see it improving value for their shareholders, he said.
“Even if the term ESG might be retired at some point, I think the activities are going to continue, maybe under the sustainability label. So the death of ESG is highly exaggerated,” Prof. Koskinen said.
Mr. Carney’s government has also called for some provisions in anti-greenwashing legislation to be scaled back. Several companies, especially in the fossil fuel and financial sectors, complained that the legislation prevented them from publishing anything about their environmental records and ambitions by putting them at risk of stiff financial penalties. Many removed materials from their websites.
The law firm Torys recently reported that 91 per cent of the largest 200 Canadian companies published a sustainability, ESG or climate-focused report last year, down from 95 per cent in its previous study. Meanwhile, it said “materially fewer” companies used the term ESG to describe the report.
Millani’s surveys, however, have shown that major investors are not backing off their own commitments to sustainable investing, including demanding climate-related and work-force diversity metrics as they evaluate their holdings.
Climate Engagement Canada, whose members, comprising several institutional investors, seek to push the largest industrial emitters to reduce climate-related financial risks, increased its membership in 2025. The group now collectively manages $14.5-trillion of assets.
In addition, there is still money flowing into ESG-related funds, both public and private. National Bank Financial reported net inflows of $1.5-billion into Canadian ESG-focused exchange-traded funds from January to November. In the most recent month, there was a net outflow of $161-million, though most of that was driven by redemptions among large institutional funds in the NBI Sustainable Global Equity ETF, the bank reported.
Long-term investors remain active in private markets. Investors plowed US$20-billion into the second iteration of NBI Sustainable Global Equity ETF, making it the world’s largest private fund targeting the energy transition.
Among other big deals, Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec bought out Montrealbased Innergex Renewable Energy Inc. for $2.8-billion.
The law firm Torys recently reported that 91 per cent of the largest 200 Canadian companies published a sustainability, ESG or climate-focused report last year, down from 95 per cent in its previous study. Meanwhile, it said ‘materially fewer’ companies used the term ESG to describe the report.
This article was written by Emily Baron Cadloff and was published in the Globe & Mail on December 29, 2025.
Like many farmers, Nick Green trades and barters as a way to ensure his cattle have enough land to graze.
Unlike many farmers, Mr. Green trades in manure.
“We essentially provide a service,” Mr. Green said. And that service is waste. Cow poop, to be exact.
Mr. Green is part of a Living Labs PEI project, where farmers partner with researchers working under Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada to test out theories in real-world conditions and on a large scale.
In this project, Mr. Green takes his cows to graze on over 200 hectares of land across Prince Edward Island. Some of the land is his. Some parcels are owned by other farmers, and Mr. Green trades with them. His cows can graze their land, and in exchange, their droppings stay on the field, fertilizing it and helping to stabilize the soil health.
In the not-so-distant past, most farmers had small, mixed operations, he said. They grew some potatoes, some row crops, they had a cow or some chickens or both. Now, things have changed.
“We’re more individualized. This person just grows potatoes.
This person grows carrots and turnips. This person grows barley and wheat,” Mr. Green said.
Chemical fertilizers have gone up in price dramatically over the past few years, and it’s been hard for farmers to adjust to those costs.
“One year [our costs] literally went up 100 per cent,” Mr. Green said. “It’s tens of thousands of dollars for us.”
But directly applying manure to fields is a much more cost-effective plan. So the farmers provide the land, and Mr. Green provides the fertilizer – fresh from the cow.
The research is overseen by Dr. Judith Nyiraneza, who is aiming to find out the best way to improve soil health and retain carbon, cutting down on Canada’s overall carbon emissions.
Dr. Nyiraneza said PEI’s soil is great for food production, but it’s fragile. The hills and topography of the island, combined with strong tides, mean the soil is prone to erosion. Growing the organic matter and nutrients in the soil makes it stronger, she said.
It’s also improving crop production for farmers. Though results are in their early stages, Dr. Nyiraneza said using rotational grazing, like the process Mr. Green is undertaking by moving his cattle around the island at specific times, boosted potato yield by 28 per cent.
Dr. Nyiraneza said rotational grazing has been around for centuries. But as farms have grown larger, the practice has fallen off in popularity, leading to soil troubles.
Once farmers moved to chemical fertilizers, Dr. Nyiraneza said, “We saw our soil degrading. It’s almost like we’re going backwards.”
For farmers who can’t – or perhaps don’t want to – get up close and personal with the sights and smells of cow manure, Dr. Nyiraneza and Dr. Erin Smith, another research scientist with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, are looking at other ways to bring manure to the soil quickly.
Rather than spreading manure widely across a field – a practice known as broadcasting – Dr. Smith is looking at a more specific injection method, where a large arm attached to a tractor runs over the field, slicing the soil and injecting liquid manure inside, then covering it up quickly, keeping the nutrients in the manure from evaporating.
“So far, we’ve seen a 35 per cent reduction [in nitrogen loss] with the injection method,” said Dr. Smith.
“This means that less nitrogen is being lost and more is available for plants to utilize.”
This Letter to the Editor was written by Samantha Green and was published in the Toronto Star on December 27, 2025.
Two key Toronto climate policies appeared set to be shelved. Then the public spoke up, Dec. 9
What climate impacts are people experiencing in their homes? Impacts to their health. Canadians spend 90 per cent of their time indoors. As the climate crisis worsens, the buildings we live in can either cause harm or help protect us from extremes. Across Canada, summers are getting hotter and more deadly. A maximum heat bylaw in rental units is critical. In Toronto, we saw 24 days last summer in which temperatures exceeded 30 C. We don’t know what next summer will bring, but we know access to cooling saves lives.
The Building Emissions Performance Standards Policy, revived by popular demand after having been shelved, will also deliver significant health benefits. Its emissionsreduction requirements will drive retrofits that could help protect a building’s residents from temperature extremes; the installation of heat pumps with air filters to reduce exposure to wildfire smoke; and a transition away from gas, improving indoor air quality and lowering asthma rates, especially among children.
We shouldn’t be surprised that residents support these policies. We know we need to drive down the emissions fuelling the climate crisis and to protect our health from climate hazards where we experience them most: in our homes.
This article was written by Bloomberg News and was published in the Toronto Star on December 27, 2025 .
Major storms on both U.S. coasts and into the upper Midwest are disrupting travel plans during the busy postholiday period when many Americans are making their way back home.
More than 1,600 flights across the United States had been cancelled as of 1:30 p.m. Friday, according to the FlightAware website. There were more than 19,000 flight delays.
New York City’s three major airports — LaGuardia, JFK, and Newark — were hit hard by the disruptions, with as much as 22 centimetres of snow forecast for the areas. Detroit, Philadelphia and Boston airports also saw cancellations and delays. Heavy rains, mudslides and flooding prompted road closures in California, while the Great Lakes region faces accumulating ice.
The disruptions are striking at one of the busiest travel times of the year.
A record number of Americans were projected to venture at least 80 kilometres from home during the Dec. 20Jan. 1 period, the American Automobile Association forecast, up about two per cent from last year.
What’s making the flooding, blizzards, snow and ice especially dangerous is that more travellers were expected to choose roads over flights this year.
About 109.5 million Americans were projected to drive for their holiday plans this year, according to the AAA outlook.
Some eight million were forecast to fly.
The extreme weather comes amid the return of La Niña, the pattern marked by a cooling of Pacific waters that can disrupt economies and trigger disasters worldwide.
My Climate Change Website 