Stricter rules target oil and gas sector, landfills in 2028
This article was written by Catherine Morrison and was published in the Toronto Star on December 17, 2025.
The federal government is planning new regulations to cut methane emissions from the oil and gas sector and landfills.
A federal document says the new rules for oil and gas operators, which expand on regulations introduced in 2018, strengthen leak detection and repair requirements and set new standards on venting.
The new rules apply to upstream production, processing and transmission facilities in Canada’s onshore oil and gas sector, including gas plants and pipelines.
The document says the regulations will be phased in starting Jan. 1, 2028, and will help the Canadian oil and gas industry with producing “lowmethane intensity products and supporting longterm success in a technologically advanced, decarbonizing industry.”
The government estimates that between 2028 and 2040 it will see a cumulative greenhouse gas emissions reduction of 304 megatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent.
New landfill methane rules will also require owners and operators of regulated landfills to monitor the landfill surface, landfill gas recovery wells and equipment used to control landfill methane emissions.
The federal government estimates that landfills accounted for 17 per cent of Canada’s methane emissions and three per cent of its greenhouse gas emissions in 2023. It says the regulations will allow for early detection of methane emissions and leaks that must be repaired within specified timelines.
By 2040, the regulations are expected to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 100 megatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent.
“This announcement is about building the strong economy of the future,” Environment Minister Julie Dabrusin said in Burnaby, B.C., Tuesday. “One that is cleaner, more competitive and more resilient.”
The government is also announcing nearly $16 million in funding for investment in methane emission reduction technologies across Canada. Methane is a greenhouse gas more than 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide over a 20year span, but its lifetime in the atmosphere is up to a dozen years versus centuries for CO2.
This article was written by Pritam Biswas and was published in the Globe & Mail on December 17, 2025.
Insured losses from natural catastrophes top US$100-billion in 2025 for a sixth straight year, with the Palisades Fire in Southern California the costliest wildfire on record globally at US$40-billion, Swiss Re said.
Annual global insured losses from natural catastrophes are expected to hit US$107-billion in 2025, driven by the Los Angeles wildfires and severe convective storms in parts of the United States, a Swiss Re Institute study showed on Tuesday.
The U.S. stood as the most affected market in 2025, accounting for 83 per cent of the global insured losses.
Insured losses from natural catastrophes topped US$100-billion in 2025 for the sixth straight year, according to the report, shifting focus back on tighter underwriting, higher premiums and fresh scrutiny of risk models.
“Reinsurers and the broader insurance sector have a dual role: acting as financial shock absorbers and supporting the development of resilient, risk-informed public policy and private investment that reduce future losses,” said Jérôme Jean Haegeli, Swiss Re’s group chief economist.
However, the figure was below Swiss Re’s earlier forecast of US$150-billion in total insured losses. Global insured losses from natural catastrophes had reached US$80-billion in the first half of 2025, according to a preliminary report issued earlier this year.
The Palisades Fire, which tore through Southern California in early 2025 and burned more than 23,000 acres, destroying homes and businesses and forcing thousands to flee, was the costliest wildfire event on record globally with insured losses of US$40-billion, Swiss Re said.
Rising climate risks are prompting insurers to pull back from high-risk areas across the U.S., widening coverage gaps and increasing financial pressure on vulnerable communities.
“2025 once again reminds us that elevated natural catastrophe losses are no longer outliers but the new baseline. It’s critical we double down on investing in resilience and adaptation so communities can be better prepared for the future,” said Monica Ningen, CEO of U.S. property and casualty at Swiss Re.
Global insured losses from severe convective storms rose to US$50-billion in 2025, making it the third-costliest year after 2023 and 2024, and extending a multiyear upward trend.
However, hurricane losses were low, as none of the storms made landfall on the U.S. coast, for the first time in 10 years, despite an active season, helping keep insured losses below Swiss Re’s pre-season expectations.
This article was written by Emma Graney and was published in the Globe & Mail on December 17, 2025.
Environment Minister Julie Dabrusin, centre, tours the British Columbia Institute of Technology’s High Performance Building Lab with BCIT’s Alex Hebert and Mary McWilliam in Burnaby, B.C., on Tuesday.
Oil and gas producers and operators of large landfills will be subject to new methane regulations come 2028, under federal rules that are more stringent – but also more flexible – than those that previously governed emissions reduction.
Reducing methane pollution is seen by policy-makers as something of a lowhanging fruit to help combat climate change. The gas is potent; it is roughly 80 times more harmful than carbon dioxide over a 20-year period. But the technology to abate it is proven to work and is relatively cheap.
The goal of the federal government’s new regulations, released Tuesday, is to reduce methane emissions from the oil and gas sector by 304 megatonnes between 2028 – when the rules take effect – and 2040. Ottawa estimates doing so will cost industry roughly $14-billion.
Landfill regulations are separate from oil and gas. The government expects them to reduce emissions by around 100 MT by 2040, in part through robust methane monitoring.
Julie Dabrusin, Minister of the Environment, Climate Change and Nature, said Tuesday that Canada has “both a moral imperative and an economic opportunity” to reduce emissions, and the new regulations are “a massive step forward” in doing so.
“It is one of the most important things that we can do and one of the most costeffective things that we can do,” Ms. Dabrusin said at an event in Burnaby, B.C.
The new rules for oil and gas build on those released in 2018, when Canada became one of the first countries to enact regulations to reduce methane emissions from the sector’s new and existing facilities.
They were a key part of Ottawa’s climate-change plan at the time, which included a goal of reducing methane emissions by 40 per cent to 45 per cent from 2012 levels by 2025.
The new regulations contain stronger requirements to reduce methane emissions than the 2018 rules, along with more robust requirements to strengthen leak detection and make repairs.
Operators will have two ways to comply.
They can choose to take action to stop methane venting and establish an inspection schedule to find leaks and repair them. Their other option is to design their own methane-control approaches, though they must meet specific emissions limits.
Ms. Dabrusin said this gives operators flexibility to implement methane-reduction solutions that make the most sense for them.
The regulations will apply to gas processing plants, transmission facilities and onshore oiland-gas production, such as well sites and pipelines. Oil refineries, fuel terminals and municipal gas distribution infrastructure are exempt. The rules will be phased in starting Jan. 1, 2028.
However, Alberta – by far Canada’s largest producer of oil and gas – will have longer to meet any emissions-reduction target, under the memorandum of understanding signed last month by Prime Minister Mark Carney and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith.
Canada has a commitment to reduce oil-and-gas methane emissions 75 per cent from 2012 levels by 2030. Under the MOU, Alberta has a 2035 target date – five years later than the rest of the country.
Amanda Bryant, a senior analyst at the Pembina Institute, a think tank, said while the federal methane regulations are well designed, their effect will be decided in Alberta through MOU talks.
The five-year carve-out means “the path forward for these new regulations in Alberta is already unclear,” Ms. Bryant said in a statement.
“We therefore urge the federal government to use these new federal regulations as the yardstick against which it assesses whatever proposed pathway to reducing methane Alberta presents during the forthcoming MOU negotiations.”
Rebecca Schulz, Alberta’s Environment Minister, said the province would “focus on practical and flexible methane reduction solutions that enable our industry to stay competitive” when it develops its plans.
The new regulations are part of Ottawa’s Climate Competitiveness Strategy, contained in the federal government’s 2025 budget.
Ms. Dabrusin said a progress report on Ottawa’s emissions-reductions plan will be released before the end of the year.
As part of Tuesday’s announcement, Ms. Dabrusin also announced nearly $16-million in funding for investment in methane emissions-reduction technologies across Canada.
This article was written by Jenn Thornhill Verma and Ivan Semeniuk, and was published in the Globe & Mail on December 17, 2025.
The permafrost cliffs around Sachs Harbour, NWT, keep inching closer to residents; this is where they were in the summer of 2024. Locals have had to consider relocating or reinforcing the shoreline.
If 2025 was the year that climate change was supposed to take a back seat to more pressing matters, then there’s one part of the planet that didn’t get the memo.
On Tuesday, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released its annual Arctic Report Card – a collection of concise, peer-reviewed summaries that aims to capture how the climate is behaving at Earth’s northern extremes, including in Canada.
The latest version comes with some big implications for those who live in the Arctic. If efforts to mitigate fossil fuel emissions, the main drivers of climate change, are sidelined, then northern communities will be even further pressed to adapt to a changing environment – and more quickly.
“The Arctic is getting warmer, the Arctic is getting wetter, the Arctic is getting greener,” said Chris Derksen, director of Environment and Climate Change Canada’s climate research division. “Year over year, it may seem like an incremental change, but over 20 years, the body of evidence for the holistic changes to the Arctic – they just become clear.”
A well-known feature of climate change is that the Arctic is warming several times faster than the rest of the planet on average. This year’s Arctic Report Card confirms that the region has just logged its warmest year since 1900 – a new extreme that follows the general trend.
Other broken records in 2025 include the lowest maximum sea ice extent in the 47year satellite record, the warmest fall on record and the highest annual precipitation since tracking began.
Multiyear sea ice – the thick, old ice that once dominated the Arctic – has declined 95 per cent since the 1980s, with what remains now largely confined to coastal areas around Greenland and the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. That difference alone is set to utterly transform the Arctic.
As the report card notes, “The profound changes in sea ice since 2005 are opening the Arctic to more human activity and bringing to the fore concerns about safety, security and the environment.”
Dr. Derksen added that the report card serves as “an annual checkup on what’s happening in the Arctic.” But increasingly, the ocean and lands it describes are beginning to look like an entirely new sort of patient.
NOAA began issuing its report card in 2006 as a way to highlight Arctic change for a broad audience, including policy makers. Canadian experts are among the 112 scientists from 13 countries that authored this year’s 20th edition of the document.
Notwithstanding its international flavour, the effort has always been organized and led by U.S. researchers and is presented each December at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union.
Tuesday’s release comes at an especially fraught time for circumpolar science and collaboration.
Earlier this year, the U.S. administration, guided by President Donald Trump’s open contempt for concerns about climate change, cut hundreds of staff, including scientists, from NOAA’s ranks. Others were blocked from attending international meetings and avoided speaking openly on international calls.
For Canadian scientists, the situation comes with a hint of déjà vu. The last time politics got in the way of U.S. and Canadian climate scientists working together on joint projects such as the Arctic report card, it was prime minister Stephen Harper’s government that furnished the roadblocks.
Yet this year’s report card is surprisingly candid about the barriers, such as “cutbacks in funding and logistical support for Arctic research and spaceborne monitoring capabilities in the United States and the European Union.” Of the 31 observing systems it assesses, 23 depend on U.S. federal support.
Dr. Derksen, whose division works with U.S. counterparts on the report’s snow monitoring, described the impact of entire federal departments in upheaval, compounded by an extended government shutdown.
“You can’t have business as usual when it comes to scientific collaborations when you have disruptions of that scale,” he said.
During a news conference on Tuesday, U.S. authors of the report card acknowledged the challenges they faced.
Twila Moon, a climate scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo., and an editor of the report card, said international collaboration helped fill the gaps. “Bumps can happen,” she said. “This was another year where we saw people stepping up, making things happen, working extra time and really hustling, because all of us believe that this is incredibly important information.”
Yet political realities cast a shadow on the briefing once it was apparent that participants, in contrast to previous years, could not speak openly about why the Arctic climate is changing so dramatically.
Repeating a phrase uttered by NOAA’s administrator Neil Jacobs during his congressional confirmation hearings, NOAA’s acting chief scientist, Steve Thur, merely stated that “there is a human role.”
For Canada, home to a vast Arctic coastline and the planet’s third-largest reserve of glacial ice, the strained relations with its closest research partner highlight the need for more domestic monitoring. The country’s own observing systems and Indigenous-led research networks are becoming more critical.
Globally, emissions-reduction efforts have stalled – last month’s COP30 summit ended without a fossil fuel phase-out road map and with new national climate plans delivering less than 15 per cent of the emissions cuts needed to hold warming to 1.5 C.
“Inuit Nunangat is at the forefront of climate change, and irreversible changes are occurring in our homeland,” said Denise Baikie, manager of policy advancement at Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, the national representational organization for Inuit in Canada. (Inuit Nunangat refers to the Inuit homeland, spanning four regions and most of Canada’s Arctic coastline.)
“Our adaptation costs and needs will grow whether or not global temperatures remain within 1.5 or 2.0 degrees. ITK is deeply concerned that Canada won’t meet its emissions targets.”
CHANGES BY SEA AND LAND
This year’s report card documents a litany of changes that are reshaping Arctic ecosystems and outpacing the models scientists use to predict them. Among those highlighted are:
Atlantification
This is the intrusion of warm, salty Atlantic water several hundred kilometres into the central Arctic Ocean. It is happening because a cold-water barrier called the halocline, which historically kept heat trapped at depth and protected sea ice from below, has lost roughly 30 per cent of its stability over three decades.
Climate models have projected that atlantification would not reach the western Arctic Ocean this century; yet, the report card documents evidence to the contrary. In the coastal seas north of Europe, August sea surface temperatures were as much as 7 C warmer than the 1991-2020 average. On Canada’s Atlantic side, the cold Labrador Current still acts as a buffer – but the report card suggests this is a delay, not a reprieve.
Borealization
Warming bottom waters, declining sea ice and rising plankton levels are driving the northward expansion of southern marine species and sharp declines in Arctic species – disrupting commercial fisheries, food security and Indigenous subsistence. In the northern Bering and Chukchi Seas, roughly one-third of Arctic species examined are declining; snow crab and Arctic cod are losing ground while walleye pollock and yellowfin sole push north. Plankton productivity has spiked – up 80 per cent in the Eurasian Arctic, 34 per cent in the Barents Sea and 27 per cent in Hudson Bay since 2003. The result has disrupted the food webs on which Arctic communities depend.
Toxic rivers
Across Alaska, iron and toxic metals released by melting permafrost have turned streams in more than 200 watersheds visibly orange over the past decade. The increased acidity and elevated metal levels
have degraded water quality, eroded biodiversity and in some streams exceeded safe drinking water guidelines for cadmium and nickel. Similar chemical processes have been documented in Canada’s Yukon and Mackenzie watersheds, though visible rusting has not yet been reported at the same scale.
Water security
Glaciers in Arctic Scandinavia and Svalbard experienced their largest annual net loss on record between 2023 and 2024; Alaskan glaciers have lost an average of 38 metres of ice since the mid-20th century. In Canada’s northernmost community, Grise Fiord (Ausuittuq) in Nunavut, the pressure is tangible.
“The glaciers here on Ellesmere Island are disappearing faster than we thought they would, or people predicted,” said Meeka Kiguktak, the mayor of Grise Fiord. The hamlet – situated closer to the North Pole than to Southern Canada – relies on glacier runoff and iceberg water as its only sources of freshwater and is now building a new water plant.
“Ausuittuq means the place that never melts,” Ms. Kiguktak said. “It’s melting now, so we gotta change the name of our community soon.”
Melting glaciers are not the only change the community has witnessed: This year, sea ice arrived late and so rough that hunters couldn’t find seal holes, pushing the season back a month; narwhals and belugas stayed until late October, weeks past normal.
A TRADITION OF WATCHFULNESS
While the changes now evident across the Arctic are historically unprecedented, the report card notes that survival in the region has always depended on close observation of the environment. Only recently has the value of this tradition been fully appreciated. “For too long, Arctic research has treated Indigenous peoples as ‘informants’ or ‘stakeholders,’ ” the report card states, adding that Indigenous experts who combine Western and traditional knowledge to care for their lands and waters “have always been scientists.”
Philippe Archambault, a marine scientist at Laval University who leads the research network ArcticNet, said that he and his colleagues have benefited from the realization that Indigenous peoples in the Arctic constitute a permanent community of observers and analysts. By partnering with them, he said, “we’re doing our work in a more effective way.”
In Canada, Inuit Nunangat is on the verge of complete climate strategy coverage. In 2019, ITK released the National Inuit Climate Change Strategy. The Inuvialuit Settlement Region adopted its strategy in 2021; Nunavik published an adaptation plan in 2024; and Nunatsiavut released its climate strategy this year. When Nunavut’s territory-wide strategy is released next year, it will close the loop: co-ordinated climate frameworks across a vast territory, built from the ground up by the communities most affected.
“Inuit know what’s happening and what’s needed,” Ms. Baikie said. “Decisions about our homeland must be inclusive of Inuit as rights holders and knowledge holders.”
This co-operation stands in contrast to the federal picture. Canada’s Climate Competitiveness Strategy, released in November, has been criticized for lacking Indigenous input. That same month, federal cabinet minister Steven Guilbeault resigned over the rollback of climate policies he had championed, including carbon pricing and the oil-and-gas emissions cap. And a report by the University of Waterloo’s Intact Centre on Climate Adaptation found Arctic coastlines are eroding by up to 40 metres a year – yet Canada lacks a co-ordinated national framework for shoreline management.
The report card sits alongside a growing ecosystem of Arctic assessments: the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (AMAP, the Arctic Council’s scientific arm) produces circumpolar reports; the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has its seventh assessment under way, with a synthesis report expected by late 2029; and Canada’s own national assessment, Canada’s Changing Climate, is expected next spring (published every five years, the last was published in 2019). Together, these reports build a layered picture of Arctic change from global to local scales.
But Canada has no equivalent to NOAA’s report card, and federal Arctic science remains fragmented: Natural Resources Canada tracks permafrost and glacier change, Fisheries and Oceans Canada produces Arctic seas reports, while Environment and Climate Change Canada monitors snow and ice.
Dr. Archambault said the situation resembles that of a medical patient who hears only from specialists, without reference to a broader prognosis.
“What we need now is to synthesize, to bring all these different streams of information together in a more cohesive way,” he said.
For John Smol, an ecologist at Queen’s University in Kingston who was just awarded Norway’s Mohn Prize for outstanding Arctic research, the distributed and costly nature of polar science means the region is getting less attention than it should from Canadians over all.
“We’re fickle with the environment,” Dr. Smol said, noting how the country’s vast northern wilderness seems to recede when the national discussion is focused on more immediate matters.
In the long run, however, Canada must prioritize the Arctic and its rapid transformation. Otherwise, he added, “we’re sleepwalking to disaster.”
Government appears to have shelved initiative put forward in leadership race
This article was written by Alex Ballingall and was published in the Toronto Star on December 16, 2025.
An early Mark Carney promise to make heavy industries help pay for your green renovation or electric cars appears to have been shelved, amid lingering questions about federal consumer incentives to cut emissions.
It’s one piece of a broader Carney climate agenda that is still taking shape in the face of criticism over a recent pipeline accord with Alberta. There are also doubts about whether federal policies can end Canada’s decades of failure on international emissions targets, with an official update expected any day.
Carney first made the polluter pay promise last January, when he was running for the Liberal leadership in a race that he ultimately won to succeed Justin Trudeau as prime minister. At the time, Carney pledged to scrap the “divisive” consumer carbon price and replace it with a system of green incentives.
One part of that plan was to create new options for big polluters subject to industrial carbon pricing systems to buy credits that would fund people’s green purchases, with Carney offering electric cars and energy efficient renovations as examples.
But the Liberal government has not highlighted the proposal since it returned to power in the April 28 general election, and Environment Minister Julie Dabrusin’s office did not say in a recent statement whether it’s still a priority. The Prime Minister’s Office declined to comment.
Rick Smith, president of the Canadian Climate Institute, called the plan an “interesting early stage idea” that would need to get fleshed out further if the government ever decides to go with it.
“We aren’t sure at the moment how that specific mechanism would work,” Smith said, suggesting the government could have good reason to take a different direction.
“We think there are better ways of encouraging consumers to purchase (and) use low emitting options like electric vehicles and heat pumps,” he said.
However, Smith added that there remains a “lack of clarity” about other options the government is pursuing. The Carney Liberals, for instance, have not announced the continuation of expired federal subsidies for zero emission vehicle purchases. And a new program to support home retrofits — replacing the outgoing Greener Homes Grant scheme — is so far only available in Manitoba, requiring other provinces to sign on if they want to participate.
Smith’s think tank has reported that emissions reduction efforts appear to be stalling amid federal policy uncertainty and the watering down of measures without clear replacements to drive down emissions.
Catherine Abreu, a prominent climate advocate who was one of two officials who resigned from the government’s independent advisory body over the recent Alberta pipeline deal, suggested Monday that she doubts whether the Carney government will put in place policies that keep pace with Canada’s climate commitments.
“All (Carney) seems interested in incentivizing so far is the ability of oil and gas CEOs to grow their profit margins,” Abreu told the Star.
Former environment minister Steven Guilbeault quit the Liberal cabinet after the Alberta deal, declaring it was now impossible to hit Canada’s climate targets.
Under the accord, the Carney Liberals offered federal support for at least one major new oil pipeline if a huge, publicly subsidized carbon capture project for the oil sands goes forward. Ottawa also scrapped a planned emissions cap for the oil and gas sector, suspended national regulations for cleaner electricity in Alberta, and delayed a target to significantly reduce potent methane emissions by five years.
This came on top of Carney’s earlier decision to eliminate the consumer price on carbon and delay — and possibly dismantle — plans for zero emission vehicle sales mandates that were set to kick in next year.
The government, however, insists it is still set on slashing emissions, while also dealing with the trade crisis set off by U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs, and seeking to transform the economy so Canada is less dependent on commercial ties to the United States. The Nov. 4 federal budget said Ottawa would strengthen industrial carbon pricing and expand existing tax credits for clean technology, electricity, manufacturing and carbon capture to put up public money to encourage private industry to reduce emissions.
Before the end of this month, the government is also required to publish updated projections for national emissions, and show whether current policies can hit Canada’s climate targets under the international Paris Agreement.
Canada has not achieved any national emissions target since global efforts to fight climate change began in the 1990s. Its goal for 2030 is to cut emissions to 40 per cent below 2005 levels, and to 45 per cent below 2005 levels by 2035.
The most recent tally of national emissions says they declined 8.5 per cent from 2005 to 2023.
Used tires could be incinerated after easing of regulations
This article was written by Patty Winsa and was published in the Toronto Star on December 15, 2025.
Ontario’s tire recycling program has slowed to a crawl following the Ford government’s decision to lower recycling targets earlier this year.
Thousands of old tires are now being stockpiled as organizations responsible for tire recycling meet lower targets and reduce collection and recycling operations.
Industry experts say the stockpiled tires could soon be sent to the U.S. for incineration, despite eco fees that consumers pay on tires to ensure they are recycled.
“This is a problem that’s going to absolutely hit the consumers of Ontario,” said Adam Moffatt, executive director of the Ontario Tire Dealers Association, which represents more than 500 tire dealers, retailers, distributors, wholesalers and industry vendors.
More than 80 members of the association have complained that their used tires aren’t being picked up, said Moffatt.
Consumers “may be told at some point in time in the coming weeks that they can’t drop (tires) off anymore,” said Moffatt.
The slowdown is the result of changes made to provincial regulations that came into effect in 2019. Those regulations made tire producers — companies that manufacture or sell tires, or products with tires — responsible for managing tires at the end of their life, replacing a monopoly held by Ontario Tire Stewardship, a government agency, for decades.
A number of socalled producer responsibility organizations, or PROs, were set up in the province to manage recycling for tire companies, which can choose which PRO they want to belong to.
The shakeup was intended to promote competition and efficiency in the recycling process.
But in January, the Ford government changed the regulations, reducing the recovery target for tires from an 85 per cent collection and management rate to a 65 per cent management rate, which means tire producers have to recycle, retread or reuse 65 per cent of the tires, by weight, that they put on the Ontario market.
Melissa Carlaw, vicepresident of communications and sustainability for eTracks Tire Management Systems, the largest PRO in Ontario, representing 70 to 80 per cent of the market, said the slowdown started after another PRO that represented 15 to 20 per cent of the tire industry stopped collecting tires in late summer.
“Once other PROs met their management targets they slowed/stopped,” said Carlaw in an email. “This has led to backlogs and they became more than eTracks — or any single PRO — could reasonably absorb.”
Carlaw said eTracks is trying to pick up the slack but can’t absorb the higher volume of tires that have come into in the market over the past few months. The nonprofit organization, founded by the Tire and Rubber Association of Canada, a national trade group, is collecting any tires that have become problematic “as we are notified of them and sending them for recycling,” said Carlaw.
The provincial regulations require PROs to continue picking up tires from garages or autobody shops, for example, that they have identified as sites in their collection system.
But once a PRO has reached its recycling target, any excess tires from sites outside its collection system can be incinerated.
The Resource Productivity and Recovery Authority (RPRA), the provincial agency that oversees recycling in Ontario, said it is aware of the situation.
“Tire producers and their PROs have been reminded that they must continue to collect and manage tires from all collection sites that are part of their collection system,” said Wilson Lee, RPRA’s chief of programs and public affairs, in an email.
“RPRA is actively monitoring compliance and will take action if producers and PROs fail to collect tires from their collection systems,” said Lee.
The Ministry of the Environment, Conservation and Parks said in an email that it is working with the authority to “address these disruptions to the collection and processing of endoflife tires.”
In November, the Environment Ministry issued an order to CFT Recycling, a site near Ottawa, to address compliance issues related to the stockpiling of tires. The ministry has stayed the order while it reviews new information from the company. Carlaw, of eTracks, said her organization is currently hauling tires out of the independently operated site, and taking them to a processor in Brantford.
The province has also lowered the number of sites that PROs have to collect from in Ontario, from 4,872 to 4,332. In a small town, a PRO could still be required to collect from all the garages or tire stores, based on that city’s population.
But in Toronto, where there are a myriad of stores that sell tires, or products with tires, a PRO can drop a site once they’ve reached their target.
That means, for example, that a garage dropped by a PRO would have to pay to have its used tires hauled away, even if they are registered with that PRO — and even though eco fees, meant to cover recycling costs, have already been paid by the consumer.
Before the collection targets were lowered by the province, PROs were collecting from more than 11,000 sites, according to data from RPRA.
It’s at least the second time that the competitive system brought in by the province has hit a major hurdle.
In 2023, one PRO collected more tires than it needed to meet its obligations on behalf of the tire producers it worked for. The company essentially held credits, as in tonnes of tires collected, that other PROs needed to meet recycling targets for that year on behalf of their producers.
Dozens of companies faced potential fines for not meeting 2023 targets, but instead of buying the credits from the other PRO, which tire producers allege were overpriced, the tire producers settled with RPRA for $7.44 million, essentially paying the authority money that consumers had paid to them in eco fees.
This opinion was written by Bruce Lourie and was published in the Globe & Mail on December 15, 2025. Bruce Lourie is the president of the Ivey Foundation and a professor of practice at the Trottier Institute for Sustainability in Engineering and Design, McGill University.
Hydro power lines run through Southern Alberta. Canada’s electricity system stands as one of the cleanest in the industrialized world and is already 84-per-cent decarbonized.
What if our pursuit of a perfectly clean electricity grid undermines the broader electrification revolution we need? The answer lies in understanding the economics of that final push toward 100-percent renewable electricity, and nowhere is this tension more visible than in Canada.
That’s because Canada’s electricity system stands as one of the cleanest in the industrialized world, already 84-per-cent decarbonized. This is an impressive achievement, built largely on the foundation of hydroelectric power in Newfoundland and Labrador, Quebec, Manitoba and British Columbia, complemented by nuclear generation in Ontario.
For most of the past two decades, Canadian policymakers have celebrated this advantage, viewing it as a springboard for climate action. But the calculus becomes more challenging with a push toward 100-per-cent decarbonization.
Sometimes called “the last mile problem,” the challenge is straightforward but profound. The first 84-per-cent of decarbonization in Canada came relatively easily. Natural geography and historical public investments provided reliable and affordable electricity. The final stretch is different.
The Energy Transitions Commission and the Rocky Mountain Institute (global think tanks) have documented this challenge across multiple jurisdictions. Their research shows that the cost curve for grid decarbonization is not linear. Going from 50-per-cent to 80-per-cent decarbonized electricity is cost-effective. Above 80 per cent, the costs increase, and that final push from 90 per cent to 100 per cent can cost exponentially more still. Pushing beyond 95 per cent requires infrastructure investments that can double or triple the marginal cost of that final clean energy.
In Canada’s case, this could mean electricity rate increases of 20 to 40 per cent in the non-hydro provinces. This isn’t a failure of renewable technology. It’s simply the reality that the last few percentage points of demand require massive investments in energy storage, transmission infrastructure, carbon capture technology or significant overbuilding of renewable capacity to ensure reliability during peak periods.
Alberta has achieved 60-percent decarbonization with natural gas replacing coal. And while wind and solar capacity have grown dramatically over the past decade, there is room for much more to further decarbonize the system and bring down the province’s sky-high electricity rates. This will only happen once the electricity market is freed from political intervention that prevents renewable power development. Over 90-per-cent decarbonization of the system is doable while maintaining a few natural gas peaking plants for reliability during January cold snaps, when electricity demand surges and evening solar production plummets.
British Columbia is a different story. It already has 98-per-cent clean electricity through hydroelectric power. BC Hydro has projected that achieving 100-percent clean energy and shutting the natural gas peaking plants would add massive cost. Similar dynamics play out in Nova Scotia, Quebec and Manitoba.
The situation is urgent, and long-term energy storage solutions are expensive. This doesn’t mean gas “peakers” forever; only until alternative technologies are proven at the scale and cost needed to get us through a January cold snap.
Modelling done by the Transition Accelerator (a Canadian think tank) shows that for Canada to achieve 2050 climate targets, roughly 60 per cent of current end-use energy needs to be electrified requiring a doubling of electricity supply. The entire climate strategy for Canada, and indeed most industrialized countries, depends on rapid electrification of transportation and heating.
This is where the paradox becomes dangerous and introduces the counterintuitive idea that total decarbonization of the electricity grid could stall economywide electrification and delay the achievement of climate change targets.
Here’s the problem: Consumers make decisions based on affordability. A family considering an electric vehicle or heat pump compares the lifetime operating costs against conventional alternatives. If electricity rates increase 30 per cent while natural gas prices remain stable, the case for electrification weakens considerably. That heat pump is less appealing if it means higher heating costs.
Now more than ever, we need a thoughtful approach to electricity planning. Maintaining a small percentage of natural gas generation for peak demand provides low-cost reliability while still achieving 95-per-cent decarbonization in the power sector. The mathematics are compelling. The emissions from gas peaker plants running a couple of hundred hours per year pale in comparison with the emissions avoided by accelerating electrification of transportation and heating.
Regulations are important to drive decarbonization, but flexibility is foremost if we are to double down on the main issue: rapidly accelerating the electrification of the economy.
This article was written by Emma Graney and was published in the Globe & Mail on December 15, 2025.
Mantel Capture is targeting Alberta’s oil sands for a project with an unnamed Canadian producer
A Boston-based startup, whose technology can cut the cost of carbon capture in half, is targeting Alberta’s oil sands, launching an engineering study for a commercial-scale project with an unnamed Canadian producer.
Mantel Capture Inc.’s foray into the oil and gas sector comes at a time of renewed interest in carbon capture and storage (CCS). The technology received a significant boost under the energy accord signed last month by Ottawa and Alberta that included a plan for construction of the Pathways Project. The massive CCS effort would create a 400kilometre pipeline to transport carbon emissions to an underground storage hub. The accord aims to have the project built by 2040.
Mantel chief executive officer Cameron Halliday said while federal and provincial policy changes are still in flux, “they’re all pointing in the right direction, which is that carbon capture is the pragmatic solution people can align on and rally around.”
Mantel already has a demonstration CCS project at Kruger Inc.’s Wayagamack pulp and paper mill in Quebec, which aims to capture 2,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide each year. The company’s new partnership in the oil and gas sector is a significant step-up in scale, designed to capture roughly 60,000 tonnes of CO2 annually.
While that represents only a fraction of the 70 megatonnes of emissions produced by Alberta’s oil sands each year, it would, if successful, demonstrate how CCS could be used in the sector.
Traditional carbon capture consumes large amounts of energy in the form of steam, making them expensive to run. But Mantel’s CCS technology instead creates steam as an endproduct, which can then be used in on-site industrial processes.
Along with capturing carbon, the oil sands project aims to generate 150,000 tonnes of highpressure steam a year.
Mr. Halliday was tight-lipped about the name of its oil producer partner, but confirmed it is a steam-assisted gravity drainage (SAG-D) operator in the Cold Lake basin, which is roughly 300 kilometres northeast of Edmonton. (The vast majority of oil sands production comes from the Athabasca basin, which is more than 400 kilometres north of Cold Lake, near Fort McMurray, Alta.)
Along with capturing carbon, the oil sands project aims to generate 150,000 tonnes of high-pressure steam a year.
Most oil sands are buried too deep below the surface for open pit mining, and use techniques like SAG-D to extract crude. Those sites use steam to heat and thin the heavy oil so it can flow into a well and be pumped out.
“That’s one of the reasons we’re super-excited about this project, because these folks use steam directly,” Mr. Halliday said.
Instead of CCS being a waste management tool to reduce emissions, he said, “we can start to be value creators.” That makes the economics of CCS more compelling – and, ultimately, more investable, he said.
Clean Prosperity, a climate policy think tank, has said the memorandum of understanding struck between Alberta and Ottawa earlier this month has the potential to attract more than $90-billion in low-carbon capital investment to the province, the vast majority of which would be in the CCS space.
But to get there, projects have to be financially attractive and in a policy environment that encourages investment, Mr. Halliday said.
Unlike the United States or Europe – which mostly use only incentives or penalties, respectively – Canada takes “both a carrot and a stick” approach that couples a CCS investment tax credit with a price on carbon to motivate companies to reduce their emissions.
“Then it’s on the technology providers and the projects to be able to deliver something that actually makes sense. What we’re able to do is, by and large, cut the cost by about 50 per cent. That’s a radical change.”
While Mantel’s partner for the venture is not one of the companies involved in the Pathways project, Mr. Halliday said his company is already working with other oil sands producers.
The ultimate goal is to provide CCS technology to sites that are further north, leveraging the Pathways project to decarbonize the oil sands, he said.
“The vast majority of Canada’s CO2 emissions are coming from these industries. It would be a massive win to be able to do that in a way that doesn’t break the bank.”
Mr. Halliday said the project is being supported in part by Alberta Innovates, a Crown corporation that provides funding for research, innovation and entrepreneurship across various economic sectors.
Alberta-based oil and gas companies are particularly sophisticated on CCS, he said, owing to the deep technical expertise they have developed over years of trying to find emissions-reducing solutions for industry.
Mantel’s oil sands engineering-design study will likely be finished toward the end of 2026, Mr. Halliday said, with project execution roughly two years after a final investment decision.
This article was written by Andrea Woo and was published in the Globe & Mail on December 15, 2025.
Flood waters surround an intersection of road and train tracks in Abbotsford, B.C., on Friday. The city declared a local state of emergency on Wednesday.
Flood waters in Abbotsford gradually receding but a second stormy weather system is expected to bring significant rainfall
After days of heavy flooding, drier conditions allowed the City of Abbotsford to reopen a major highway and lift evacuation alerts for more than 1,000 properties over the weekend, even as warnings were issued ahead of another round of rain.
Flood waters in Abbotsford were receding gradually Sunday, with some areas seeing notable improvements, according to an update from the city. Water from the Nooksack River, which topped its banks just south of the U.S. border on Thursday, continues to flow north but at a decreasing rate.
However, a second stormy weather system is expected to bring significant rainfall through the region on Sunday and Monday and has potential to exacerbate flooding issues in already hard-hit areas.
On Sunday, the B.C. River Forecast Centre issued a flood warning for the Chilliwack River and its tributaries and maintained a warning for the Sumas River. High stream flow advisories were either issued or maintained for large swaths of the province, from the north to south coast.
As of Sunday evening, about 90 properties in B.C. were under evacuation order and 1,260 under evacuation alert, according to government officials. As well, 56 farms were under evacuation order and 13 under evacuation alert, with those numbers expected to rise in coming days. An alert means people should be prepared to leave on short notice.
B.C. Emergency Management Minister Kelly Greene urged people in affected areas to prepare grab-and-go bags, have an emergency plan and avoid unnecessary travel.
“We aren’t through this yet, and it’s important to be prepared,” she said.
An atmospheric river brought heavy rainfall to the region beginning last Tuesday, with some areas receiving 145 millimetres of rain by Thursday. The City of Abbotsford declared a local state of emergency on Wednesday and the Ministry of Transportation closed every major highway connecting the Lower Mainland to the Interior that night, citing falling rock and debris, and avalanche hazards.
Over the weekend, the City of Abbotsford lifted evacuation alerts for 1,069 properties in Sumas Prairie West and Sumas Prairie East. As well, 248 properties were downgraded from evacuation orders to alerts. Evacuation orders remained in place for 77 properties in the city and evacuation alerts for 408.
Highway 1, the main route of the Trans-Canada Highway in B.C., reopened in both directions Sunday. Highway 3 remained closed from Hope to Manning Park because 21 sites are seriously damaged by landslide, culvert blowouts and road washouts. There’s no estimated reopening time.
City staff and members of Canada Task Force 1 conducted rapid damage assessments on homes in flooded areas to determine whether each structure was safe to re-enter. Placards were left advising property owners of the assessment results.
On Sunday, Abbotsford Mayor Ross Siemens said in a video update that the work is continuing.
“Today we are breathing a little easier and I am grateful that we are starting to see some of our residents return home.”
Both the current and former mayors of Abbotsford have expressed frustration with Ottawa for inaction on funding the necessary infrastructure to prevent such floods following the catastrophic flooding of 2021, which led to insured losses of more than $675-million.
Asked about this on Sunday, Ms. Greene, the emergency preparedness minister, said it’s important for the federal government to recognize the economic and agricultural importance of the Sumas region, one of the most intensively farmed areas of Canada.
The minister noted that, after 2021, the federal government pledged to support Abbotsford, Merritt and Princeton with rebuilding through the federal Disaster Mitigation and Adaptation Fund.
“Subsequent to that, their applications for DMAF were declined, and that program was then retired,” Ms. Greene said. “So there really isn’t a funding stream available. It’s incredibly difficult to have of this kind of situation where the federal government really needs to step up, and then being really absent from that conversation.”
Shawn Mullaly, an Abbotsford resident who lives west of the Sumas Prairie flats, described the area on Sunday as “almost postapocalyptic.”
“It’s usually very busy in our area here, with highway traffic, people getting off at the Whatcom Road exit to go to McDonald’s and Tim Hortons, and to gas up,” he said after surveying the neighbourhood. “But it’s dead quiet. When it gets closed like that, it’s like everything stops, and it’s just really bizarre. My biggest observation, I think, is just how eerily quiet it gets.”
Photographs that he has taken over the past several days show the rise and fall of flood waters. In the parking lot of Castle Fun Park, an all-season theme park that has closed three times since 1990 due to flooding, an SUV is shown on Thursday night submerged in water up to its windows. By Sunday, the vehicle rested on the edge of a large pool of water, its tires sitting in a few inches of muddy runoff.
Mr. Mullaly, who helped fill sandbags and assisted at a flooded farm during the 2021 flood, said authorities appeared much more prepared this time.
“Kudos to the local police and the traffic control, because that was one thing we noticed right away, that they got right in there and moved people out,” he said. “In 2021 a lot of people got stranded, and this time it was cleared out.”
Tanmay Rane, a meteorologist with Environment Canada, said another atmospheric river is expected to bring 40 to 60 mm of rain to the Lower Mainland by Monday, and 80 mm at higher elevations.
Connie Chapman with the River Forecast Centre said while current models show that this event is expected to affect different areas of the Lower Mainland, weather systems can change direction at the last minute.
Environment Canada warns more rain is expected across the already saturated Fraser Valley
This article was written by the Canadian Press and was published in the Toronto Star on December 14, 2025.
Abbotsford, B.C., resident Teresa Vogel showed up at Delair Park where her son plays baseball on Saturday to see the damage from floodwaters after heavy rain flooded parts of the city, closing roads including a stretch of the TransCanada Highway.
Vogel said it was “devastating” and she was shocked to see the baseball diamond surrounded by water, although it had receded since the day before.
“I can’t believe I was walking on that field months ago, and now you can’t even go down there,” she said. “When we got the news that it was flooded here at Delair, it was shocking, more shocking when you come and see it in person.”
The City of Abbotsford said floodwaters were receding Saturday, with some areas seeing significant improvement, but the TransCanada Highway remained closed and drivers were being warned against trying to get around flooded areas.
Environment Canada warned more rain is expected across the already saturated Fraser Valley, with the latest forecast calling for a “potentially significant push of moisture” on Monday and into early next week. The agency was also warning of an increased risk of landslides, as the rainfall may destabilize slopes.
Not far from from the flooded baseball field, a business complex was closed due to an evacuation order, but many drivers ignored road closure signs and could be seen barrelling through a flooded portion near the complex’s entrance.
Dean Jeffery works at a veterinary clinic in the complex, and said it was a “waiting game” watching the rains last week.
He said his home in the Huntington Village area has been under evacuation alert, and it was ordered evacuated in 2021 when flooding devastated Abbotsford following heavy rain.
Jeffrey said his neighbourhood has seen some flooding this time, but his home has been spared. “We haven’t been asked to leave this time, so it can’t be as bad,” he said. “Although I don’t know what Monday’s going to bring, or Tuesday.”
The city issued a statement Saturday warning that water continues to flow across the border from the Nooksack River in Washington State, where it first overflowed on Wednesday.
The statement said side roads were still flooded, adding that online maps have been showing inaccurate information about roads that remain closed.
As for the main highway, it said there was “currently no way through” Abbotsford and Chilliwack to get to the eastern reaches of B.C.
Kelly Green, B.C.’s emergency management minister, has said about 450 properties in B.C. have been evacuated, most of them in Abbotsford, with 1,700 under evacuation alert.
My Climate Change Website 