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Residents seek answers after new recycling system’s bumpy start

This article was written by David Rider and was published in the Toronto Star on January 5, 2026.

A key figure in Ontario’s recycling transition says the new system has been set up in a needlessly bureaucratic way.

Allen Langdon, chief executive of Circular Materials — the packaging industry’s nonprofit that has taken over recycling from municipalities as of Jan. 1 — told the Star that, in the years ahead, the province should move to a model that looks more like British Columbia’s highly regarded program. Others, meanwhile, are pointing the finger back at Circular Materials itself, saying the industryfriendly organization has slowed progress and will be the face of a rollout they expect to be a “disaster.”

Langdon knows the B.C. model. Years before he was hired by Circular Materials he helped set up North America’s first “extended producer responsibility” regime in that western province, one that is still considered, more than a decade later, a gold standard for the recycling industry.

It’s too late to streamline Ontario’s system as municipalities handed off bluebox responsibilities to Circular Materials, funders of which include Loblaw, Costco, CocaCola and Keurig Dr Pepper Canada, on New Year’s Day — “that ship has sailed,” Langdon told the Star in an interview. But he’s hopeful that, down the road, this province will adopt policies and practices roadtested in B.C.

“Ontario’s system has created complexities and added administrative burden, rather than the flexible approach B.C. took of continuous improvement over a number of years and several plans,” said Langdon, who also oversees Circular Materials operations in Alberta, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Yukon. From 2013 to 2018, he was managing director for Recycle B.C.

“Simplifying Ontario’s system would make it cheaper, more flexible and more responsive.”

Langdon said he doesn’t know why the Ford government crafted a madeinOntario plan rather than follow B.C.’s example, adding, “They could have asked me, or others. I have no idea why they didn’t.”

A lack of flexibility

Ontario’s regulations are “hardwired” into legislation and difficult to change, Langdon said, compared with B.C.’s more flexible launch that allowed some municipalities to stick with their own programs until they felt comfortable switching to the industryrun system.

Ontario created the Resource

Productivity and Recovery Authority (RPRA) to regulate and enforce the province’s “circular economy” laws, reporting to the environment minister. B.C. recyclers deal directly with Environment Ministry officials, developing fiveyear road maps for system improvement agreed upon by the province, industry and municipalities. Recyclers risk ministry fines if they break the rules.

B.C. also has one “producer responsibility organization” (PRO), a collective of industry partners, per type of material collected. Ontario has multiple PROs per collected material, sometimes making different decisions, as seen in Ontario’s troubled tire recycling program.

He said Ontarians should see a mostly seamless transition with an expanded list of recyclables including black plastics, hot drink containers, toothpaste tubes and ice cream tubs. It’s industry that must grapple with extra cost and red tape, he added.

Some environmentalists, however, are pointing the finger at Circular Materials and its wasteproducing members for Ontario’s troublesome transition to date and potential problems ahead.

A contaminated process?

The Ford government announced in 2021 that corporations making packaging waste would, over three years starting in 2023, fully assume the operations and cost of recycling from the municipal patchwork of systems and services partly funded by industry.

Ontario’s thenenvironment minister Jeff Yurek predicted the switch would see more material recycled rather than go to landfill. About half of the waste currently collected by the city goes to landfill. Toronto officials at the time forecast annual savings of $15 million for the cashstrapped city, thanks to not having to collect and/or process blue bin contents as well as other recyclables, including hazardous waste such as paint and batteries.

Early on, however, recycling experts called the province’s plan a madeinOntario mishmash so indecipherable they doubted the transition could launch in 2023. The Ford government tabled reforms but controversy and policy reversals continued.

Last June, the Environment Ministry proposed killing its plan to add blue box recycling to apartments, condos, longtermcare and retirement homes that previously had private pickup. It also proposed a fiveyear delay in forcing waste producers to recycle materials from receptacles in public spaces.

The Ford government said it needed to reduce the burden on industry. Municipal officials predicted an avalanche of extra waste to landfill.

Final regulations published in September delay by five years — rather than cancel — requirements to expand blue box into multiresidential buildings not currently in the municipal recycling system. Also, a muchcriticized proposal to suspend some of industry’s recycling targets for five years was reduced to a twoyear grace period for waste producers to make “best efforts” to hit targets before facing potential fines.

The Ford government stuck to its plan, however, to relieve producers of responsibility for publicspace recycling collection and processing, putting the cost on municipalities, including Toronto, which now expects to annually save only $10 million from the recycling transition.

Ontario reduces its targets

Emily Alfred, a senior campaigner at Toronto Environmental Alliance, told the Star that adopting B.C. recycling practices won’t fix an Ontario system heading for major waste woes.

Ontario municipalities are pushing to accelerate and expand the recycling transition, she said in an email, while “Circular Materials, along with producers, have done a lot of advocacy to narrow the scope and slow down Ontario’s regulations, which is the main cause of the problems, along with ongoing changes that have made it impossible for municipalities to plan.”

Residents are learning what they can put in their bin and who is picking it up, Alfred said, “but the bigger issue is that this is part of a systematic erosion of recycling and all waste programs in Ontario.

“We’re expecting the new blue box system in Ontario is going to be a disaster.”

Alfred pointed to the province reducing its initial recycling targets and allowing producers to count the incineration of some materials toward 15 per cent of recycling targets.

Ashley Wallis, associate director of Environmental Defence, said there are drawbacks to the B.C. system compared to Ontario’s — if the new system is allowed to operate properly.

Having the RPRA as an arm’slength enforcement agency is important to ensuring impartiality, as opposed to B.C.’s streamlined system that makes the environment minister “complicit in the producers’ approach,” she said in an email.

Prepping for the switch

Even though they’ve stopped being responsible for recycling, local governments expect to get an earful from residents if things go wrong.

Toronto officials recently urged people to not call 311 if they have a blue bin problem, instead to reach out to Circular Materials, which will have a customer service line open only weekdays and not all day, with afterhours callers being invited to leave a message.

One potential point of confusion is the recycling collection schedule. Curbside collection days remain the same in Toronto, Wednesday or Thursday, depending on where you live.

However some residents in the old City of Toronto will see a switch in the alternating order of recycling and garbage pickup. Affected residents received notices of the change, which is also on the city’s website.

The city says it has been working with Circular Materials since 2023 to make the switch as painless as possible, while noting “service gaps,” such as the city having to pick up recyclables from park bins and the delay in servicing all multiresidential buildings.

“The city is working to fill these gaps, where possible, so recycling access and customer service remains strong,” said city spokesperson Krystal Carter.

Aurora was among municipalities to complain when residents were told they had to take hulking 95gallon recycling bins.

Mayor Tom Mrakas said they have since been offered 65gallon bins, but those are still difficult for some people to handle. Mrakas also said local governments have had to solve such problems and shoulder the task of keeping residents informed.

“A stronger and earlier communications effort by Circular Materials would have gone a long way in easing this transition for residents,” Mrakas said, adding that the Ford government has been receptive and responsive to his feedback.

Gary Wheeler, a spokesperson for Ontario Environment Minister Todd McCarthy, said regulations to guide the transition were introduced after “extensive consultation” with municipalities and waste producers, noting that, for the first time, the same recyclables will be collected provincewide.

Circular Materials will work closely with communities to ensure a smooth transition, he said, while the RPRA will “closely monitor implementation to ensure that producers fulfil all regulated requirements.”

Canada’s biofuel subsidies start as it tries to stay competitive with U.S.

This article was written by Kate Helmore and was published in the Globe & Mail on January 5, 2025.

Canola is harvested on a farm near Clandeboye, Man., in September. The beleaguered Canadian canola industry has faced a 75.8-per-cent duty on canola seed levied in August by China, the largest market for the crop.

Incentives are intended to keep Canada’s clean fuel competitive with U.S. imports

The first part of Ottawa’s strategy to boost biofuels and shore up domestic demand for canola came into force on Jan 1.

The $370-million Biofuel Production Incentive will be given to biofuel producers over the next two years. A fuel producer could receive a maximum of $40.2-million a year.

The subsidies are intended to keep Canada’s clean fuel competitive with U.S. imports, whose producers receive hefty tax credits. Ottawa’s payouts are also intended to shore up demand for the Canadian crops used as feedstock in clean fuel, especially beleaguered canola, which has faced a 75.8-per-cent duty on canola seed levied by Beijing since August. China is the largest market for Canadian canola seed.

The incentives are the first part of a two-stage strategy announced in September. Environment and Climate Change Canada is also reviewing its Clean Fuel Regulations (CFRs), with changes expected to come into force in about two years.

“This represents a significant undertaking by the federal government,” said Fred Ghatala, president of Advanced Biofuels Canada. “It represents a speed of action to put a necessary program in place and longer-term vision to have our sector transition from survival to thrive mode.”

Canada’s CFRs came into force in 2023. As part of the regulations, fuels that measure below the carbon-intensity mandate earn credits, and the lower the intensity, the more credits earned.

At full output, Canada’s biofuels sector would generate more than $18-billion a year in economic activity and support 30,000 jobs, according to Advanced Biofuels Canada.

However, biofuel producers have been in “survival mode” since then U.S. president Joe Biden launched the 45Z Clean Fuel Production Credit in 2022, said Mr. Ghatala. Armed with this incentive, clean fuel imports from the U.S. are outcompeting domestic products in the Canadian market. The 45Z was expanded last July as part of President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill.

“This has been a freight train coming at our sector since,” said Mr. Ghatala.

The new Canadian incentive does not put Canadian producers on equal footing, he added, but it will help maintain some degree of competitiveness until ECCC finalizes changes to the CFRs.

Fuel producers will be paid on a quarterly basis. They will receive 16 cents per litre on the first 170 million litres of eligible production, and then 10 cents a litre on the 130 million litres produced after that.

This is good news for Canadian canola farmers, said Andre Harpe. In 2024, $4.9-billion of canola was sold to China. Beijing’s tariffs in August sank prices for farmers and slashed exports. The biofuel industry cannot absorb the loss of the Chinese market, but the incentive does play an important role in shoring up domestic demand, said Mr. Harpe.

“Any time canola is going to get used domestically it is a good thing. This is a good start.”

However, the incentives are only the first step, said Mr. Harpe. The most important part is the changes to the Clean Fuel Regulations.

In 2024, 73 per cent of CFR credits from low-carbon fuel support were generated by imports in 2024. A significant source of clean fuel feedstock is used cooking oil that is imported from markets in Asia.

To help Canada’s beleaguered canola sector, the CFRs need to prioritize domestic feedstocks, said Mr. Harpe. For example, according to the Canadian Oilseed Processors Association, a policy to curb imports of cooking oil so canola could capture just half of the Canadian market would use 2.5 million tonnes of canola seed, 42 per cent of the total volume exported to China in 2024.

Two main policies are being evaluated by ECCC, according to a discussion paper unveiled in December. One would require fuel producers to use a minimum amount of domestic feedstock. The other approach would place more value on domestic feedstock by giving low-carbon fuels produced using domestic feedstock more credits per litre.

The comment period for CFR amendments closes Jan. 15.

UK National Emergency Briefing Wakes Up World

This article was written by Robert Hunziker and was published in CounterPunch on December 5, 2025.

Image by NOAA.

An impressive display of world class scientists recently (Nov. 27^th) held a UK National Emergency Briefing, informing the world of impending climate change disaster scenarios that can no longer be ignored. A war-time footing is necessary. Ten of the UK’s leading experts briefed politicians, business leaders, faith, sport, and the media in a marathon session.

The British are dead serious about the deleterious impact of climate change and intend to alert the public to this existential threat to civilization. Eighty-one (81) Members of Parliament and fifty-two (52) Peers attended the session headed by the UK’s chief scientific advisor, explaining why the UK must take emergency-level action like a war-time scenario. There were 1,200 invite-only attendees at the session. A 45-minutte documentary of the event is in the production stage.

Opening remarks by Professor Mike Berners Lee, Lancaster University, Sustainability Expert, Chair of the session: “For an understanding of the root causes of the most serious crisis that will ever impact our species we need people. We need to trust them because they are telling us the truth…. The information that we’re going to be looking at is extremely serious, urgent, and it affects us all here in the UK. That is why we’re calling this a National Emergency Briefing…. In the words of James Baldwin: ‘Nothing can be changed until it is faced.’ COP30 recently ended without any progress on fossil fuel emissions, in fact, the words ‘fossil fuel’ were stripped from the proceedings. We desperately need to reset the narrative on climate change and wipe out misinformation.”

The original video of the event d/d November 27th runs 3:05. Herein a sampling of excerpts of the first five speakers suffices to emphasize the critical nature of the subject prompting this emergency briefing. These excerpts are a combination of direct quotes as well as summaries of statements.

Excerpts of First Four Speakers:

Chris Packham, UK Naturalist: We are the only known life forms in the universe, and we’ve got nowhere else to go. This little blue planet is where we will either live in harmony with the environment or we will destroy ourselves and much of other life too… Do we want it on our conscience that we waste everything? Why are we unbelievably pulling back from addressing the greatest crises to ever threaten our species, climate breakdown and biodiversity loss… climate denialism is a mainstream thing again thanks to well-oiled machines of the rich, powerful, and influential lobbyists from the fossil fuel and other industries. A dangerous wave of misinformation and lies fills our lives. But worse, it fills the lives of our decision-makers… the people who shape policy. For example, the petro states said “no” and thrashed COP30 because of the crazed consensus requirement that allows oil to say “no” and abort any movement against CO2 emissions. Fossil fuel companies are some of the biggest contributors to our politicians, especially the less scrupulous. And the media is failing to explain to the public “the gravity of our predicament.” We must listen to the science… if politicians ignore science, billions of lives are at risk. Politicians in the audience today must listen to the scientists and act accordingly.

Nathalie Seddon, Professor of Biodiversity, Oxford Martin School: Nature is not simply nice to have. It’s not a luxury. It’s critical national infrastructure. When we destroy and degrade it, we expose this country to escalating risks, e.g. floods, fires, heat waves, insecurity and economic instability. When we protect and restore it, we can build resilience. The living creatures that support our entire life system are breaking down. We are facing a national emergency not only because the climate is changing but because the living systems that regulate that climate, protect homes and feed our people are breaking down here in one of the most nature depleted nations on Earth. The facts are sobering. Only about ½ of UK biodiversity remains. Only 14% of rivers in England are in good ecological health as the result of chemical pollution, sewage discharge and erosion, and agricultural runoff choking the arteries of the landscape. When rivers fail, so does resilience to droughts, etc.. Only 7% of our woodlands are healthy, only 3% of our lands, and 8% of our waters are effectively protected for nature. Over 5 million properties in England are at risk of flooding. Additional national concerns due to degradation, misuse, and abuse of nature are itemized in this speech skillfully transitioning the errors of society and government to the need to follow public opinion, which strongly supports protecting nature and redirecting public funds from inadvertent harmfulness to positive embracing of nature within government policymaking.

Kevin Anderson, Tyndall Centre for Climate Change: Let me start by framing the problem as I see it. And it’s very much that CO2 concentrations in the environment in the atmosphere that are rising at unprecedented rates… across the last 800,000 years, CO2 varied by 100 parts per million but over the past 10,000 years it only varied by 20 parts per million. This gave civilization a very stable climate. Now, in a blink of geologic time we’ve increased, since 1850 from 280 to 424 ppm or +134 ppm in less than 200 years, burying 9,800 years of the perfect climate system, not too hot, not too cold. That is gone. Therefore, we must eliminate, not cut, fossil fuels or temperatures will continue to go up. We are headed for 2C by midcentury and 3C to 4C by 2100. The planet system cannot handle it. We are looking at systemic collapse of economies within a collapsing climate system. 1.5C is no longer a viable target because of failure to cut emissions, which is a very depressing admission. There is new evidence that we are warming up much faster than science expected, which adds to the urgency of taking action now.

The world needs to cut carbon emission by 13% per year to hold temps down to 2C. We need a profound shift in our social norms to accomplish that, and you can forget carbon capture and storage. After 30 years of promises to do the job, according to the CCS Institute, it’s managed to store less than 0.03% of all fossil fuel emissions after 30 years of promises by the ‘delay technology” groupies, like the oil and gas industry. These are false solutions designed to avoid meaningful legislation to cut back emissions. Timely technologies are required, e.g. retrofitting homes, more public transport, EV charging stations, zero carbon electricity.

It is now too late for nonradical solutions. There is no way other than revolutionary rates of change, and the rich, luxury class of living must give up its overallocation of resources. Remarkably, the top 1% of the population of high income/high emissions people give rise to twice the level of emissions as the bottom half of the world’s population. This statistic makes the case for revolutionary change. Put another way, the top 1% generate twice the greenhouse gas emissions as 4,000,000,000 people.

According to an article in Oxfam (not provided by Anderson but this is a fact-check of his !% statement; the Stockholm Environment Institute also participated in Oxfam’s study, and several other independent studies show variations of the Oxfam study; all similar, some showing less some more but all show vast inequity in carbon polluting by class status) Oxfam (est. 1942) Richest 1% Use Their Entire Annual Carbon Limit in Just 10 Days d/d January 10, 2025: “The richest 1% are responsible for more than twice as much carbon pollution than half of humanity, with devastating consequences… To meet the 1.5°C goal, the richest 1% need to cut their emissions by 97% by 2030… Governments need to stop pandering to the richest. Rich polluters must be made to pay for the havoc they’re wreaking on our planet… Tax them, curb their emissions, and ban their excessive indulgences —private jets, superyachts, and the like. Leaders who fail to act are effectively choosing complicity in a crisis that threatens the lives of billions.”

Kevin Anderson (cont.) We need urgent legislation to drive down energy use within that 1% group. And I would argue that the second prerequisite of Paris is that fair and deep reductions in energy use… This will deliver immediate and substantial cuts in emissions; it gives us critical time to put in place zero carbon technologies that are very important, and it releases the labor, the materials, the finance, and even the political capital we need to drive the clean revolution… affordable low carbon homes, high quality public transport, etc., we need to move the resources and labor that furnish the private luxury of a relative few of us like me and many of us here to the public well-being for all.

Tim Lenten, Global Systems Institute, University of Exeter: Tipping Points.

If we carry on with current trajectory to three or maybe four degrees centigrade, then we will definitely be in a national emergency. We’ll likely be at a tipping point with a climate that’ll make this country a very different uninhabitable place. There is plenty of evidence that we are headed toward several tipping points, which interact, causing widespread climate disruption. We’ve already crossed a tipping point with the world’s coral reefs that support the livelihoods of ½ billion people and protects coastlines from rising sea levels and storm surges.

An upcoming example of the most dangerous tipping point is AMOC, the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, which is already showing signs of slowing. Paleoclimate research shows us that AMOC has turned off and on several times over the last ice age.

If we lose the deep-water formation of AMOC, a state-of-the-art scientific model using 2°C of global warming shows what’ll happen with the decadal winter climate extremes, assuming we cross this tipping point, thereby losing the enduring circulation of tropical warm water to the North Atlantic, heretofore warming Europe.

Here are the theoretical consequences of losing AMOC because of a 2°C warming cycle:

(1) Remarkable comeback of Arctic sea ice reaches down to covering most of the North Sea by February each winter

(2) In London it is minus 20°C (-4°F) with three frozen months of the year

(3) Edinburgh minus 30°C (-22°F) with five and a half frozen months per year

(4) But the summers will still be hotter than today because of a 2°C warmer world, well beyond today’s 1.4-1.5C.

(5) The UK will be nearly 100% dependent upon import of food crops and suffer a shortage of potable water.

(6) On a global scale, regions where staple crops are grown will be reduced by 50%.

In closing, a radical acceleration of action towards zero emissions is required. And the only way to convince ourselves that that’s credible is to show positive tipping points achieved via transition from fossil fuels to renewables that can become self-accelerating, and we’ve successfully done that in the UK but only in the power sector. At the peak in 2012, 40% of UK electricity came from black coal. Today it is zero from coal. This was accomplished by a climate change act with cross-party consensus to gradually put a floor price on carbon levied just on the power sector, stepped up over time, enough to incentivize switching to renewables, which, with ever-larger economies of scale, serve as a tipping point to lesser costs and enhanced proficiency. Importantly, in the final analysis, mandates on a global scale are needed to take out fossil fuels, transitioning as soon as possible out of fossil fuels.

The full 3:05 session UK National Emergency Briefing is on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/live/2-PFKT1SNc4

Robert Hunziker lives in Los Angeles and can be reached at rlhunziker@gmail.com.

Environment, economic prosperity can coexist

This opinion was written by Tim Gray and was published in the Globe & Mail on January 2, 2025.

It will require bold leadership to get to a better future

As we move into 2026, the landscape of environmental advocacy in Canada has changed dramatically. Canada’s closest neighbour and biggest trading partner is driving massive political and economic restructuring, which has created unease among Canadians at a collective and personal level.

These new threats have also forced public attention away from clean energy, climate change, chemical and plastic pollution and urban sprawl. Unfortunately, many polluting industries have seized this moment to maximize their profits, lobbying decision-makers to roll back progress and carry out attacks on long standing environmental protection rules and legislation.

These industries argue that it’s for the greater economic good. But is it? Evidence from history shows that societies succeed in the long term when they integrate protection of the environment into economic and social development strategies. In fact, for the first time in human history, scientifically conclusive evidence is telling us that economic progress must be grounded in what is best for the environment.

As we move into 2026, my prediction (and my hope) is that Canada will take the opportunity to get some key things right to chart a course toward a better future.

The federal government has been hyper focused on nation building projects. In 2026, watch for these projects to start aligning with clean energy, climate action and protection of nature. Prioritizing projects like highspeed rail, offshore wind farms, clean steel and better public transit will keep us in our nation building era without leaving the environment behind.

The fossil fuel industry has worked hard to block renewable energy projects. Fortunately, the price of solar, wind and battery storage systems has dropped so dramatically that it will become increasingly difficult to convince citizens to stick with expensive and polluting gas and oil. In 2026, expect to see a continuing shift from gas furnaces to heat pumps and from gas plants to renewable energy production projects.

As we change the way our homes are powered, big changes will also come to the rules that guide how those homes are built. In place of regulations that have prevented midrise buildings, we can anticipate that cities and towns will recognize that the housing crisis will be partly solved by encouraging more of this type of building. This will allow us to densify existing neighbourhoods.

Making our neighbourhoods denser and more walkable will hopefully mean fewer private cars on the road. But when we do need to drive, those cars should be electric. This year, we’ll be moving toward more affordable EVs and hope for a major government push on charging infrastructure. There is no future for Canadian automakers and the jobs they provide if Canada sits out the move to EVs. In 2026, EVs will be back in style as both consumers and governments recognize that they are less polluting and better value.

Speaking of value, 2026 is the year we think we’ll finally see the Ontario government put a price on non-alcoholic drink containers through an expanded deposit-return program. This will greatly increase recovery and recycling rates. It’s not hard to do, and eight of the other 10 Canadian provinces already have successful programs in place.

It will also be the year that the jig is up on the long-hidden truth about the risks of polyfluoroalkyl chemicals (PFAS), also known as “forever chemicals.” These include developmental effects, cancers and disruption of hormone regulation. These chemicals are found in a plethora of everyday products, including non-stick coatings, menstrual products and furniture. Fortunately, after long delays, we can watch for federal bans on at least some of the most egregious PFAS uses this year. We must continue to push for action on all of them.

Finally, the cynical Alberta-federal government MOU that undercuts Canadian climate action will run up against rocks of its own making. Oil demand is expected to peak by the end of this decade, meaning the massive increases in oil sands production and a risky bitumen pipeline to the British Columbia northwest coast make no economic sense. These projects will never move forward. We’ll be reading the MOU’s epitaph well before the year’s end.

The predictions I’ve laid out here can become a reality, but it will require bold action from our leaders. This year, let’s hold them accountable and ensure that Canada moves in the right direction. Here’s to a 2026 where clean water, a safe climate and healthy communities ground all our efforts to create economic and social prosperity.

Critics decry PCs’ development plan

Province to create `special economic zones’ to offset effects of U.S. tariffs

Premier Doug Ford, left, and Economic Development Minister Vic Fedeli are fasttracking development in Ontario with new regulations that allow the province to bypass local and provincial rules for “trusted proponents and projects.”

This article was written by Rob Ferguson and was published in the Toronto Star on January 1, 2026.

Ontario is paving the way for Premier Doug Ford’s controversial “special economic zones” in 2026 amid other changes that include making life tougher for impaired drivers and easier for skilled workers moving here.

Stepping up the push to fasttrack development to offset economic damage from U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs, new regulations taking effect Thursday let the province bypass local and provincial rules for “trusted proponents and projects.”

But critics are worried protections for the environment, workers, wildlife, endangered species, Indigenous communities and their treaties will be watered down in what they dub “no law” zones.

Ford, who is keen to develop the vast Ring of Fire’s critical mineral deposits in northwestern Ontario for electric vehicles, defence projects and other industries, argued too much red tape would hold projects back at a critical time.

“We need to get moving, folks,” he told reporters when Bill 5, legislation establishing the zones, passed in June.

“We aren’t going to sit back and wait 15 years to get shovels in the ground while the whole world is eating our lunch,” he added, noting that’s how long it can take to open a mine in Ontario.

Economic Development Minister Vic Fedeli signalled two weeks ago that the province is working with “interested partners” to designate the first sites.

“Special economic zones will bolster Ontario’s advantage by cutting red tape, accelerating approvals and protecting the jobs and industries that keep our province resilient and competitive,” he said.

The zones will be a “critical tool to accelerate major nationbuilding projects and secure jobcreating investments that deliver lasting prosperity for our workers,” Fedeli said.

He pledged to maintain the province’s standards for environmental protections and to consult with relevant parties — including Indigenous communities, some of which were vigorously opposed to Bill 5.

Opposition parties aren’t buying Fedeli’s assurances about the zones, which can be designated anywhere in the province, such as on prime farmland.

“You cannot trust this government to give themselves unlimited powers,” said New Democrat Leader Marit Stiles, citing the Progressive Conservative government’s $8.28billion Greenbelt land swap scandal now under criminal investigation by the RCMP.

Green Leader Mike Schreiner issued his own warning given that Ford is under fire for his $2.5billion Skills Development Fund that gave hefty payouts to hundreds of groups with lowranked applications — with Labour Minister David Piccini now under investigation by Ontario’s integrity commissioner over it.

“Special economic zones will open the door to backroom deals and insider giveaways, while Indigenous rights, environmental protections, worker rights and local democracy suffer,” Schreiner said.

Under the regulations filed Dec. 16, Fedeli must be convinced projects are “economically significant or strategically important” and that proponents have “a good record of complying with legal requirements” such as health and safety for workers, the environment and financial standards. (The same goes for any subcontractors a corporation or other proponent hires to work on a project.) In addition, Fedeli must be convinced proponents “do not pose a security risk” and he must consent to any change in the control of a company building a project.

Also in regard to Ontario’s economy, the province is now allowing certified professionals — including healthcare workers, architects, engineers, land surveyors and electricians — from other Canadian jurisdictions to start jobs in Ontario shortly after arriving.

They can work on a provisional basis until their certifications are formally recognized by the relevant Ontario regulatory authorities. The change is intended to help employers in Ontario get the skilled workers they need.

Meanwhile, Ontario is also taking aim at drivers who get behind the wheel when they shouldn’t. Amendments to the Highway Traffic Act now impose lifetime suspensions for anyone convicted of impaired driving causing death.

Other measures include mandatory remedial education for drivers after firsttime alcohol and drug occurrences, longer roadside suspensions for driving under the influence, automatic mandatory minimum licence suspensions upon conviction for stunt driving and lifetime licence suspensions upon a third conviction for vehicle theft.

Additionally cracking down on auto theft, a new offence under the Highway Traffic Act provides for fines up to $100,000 and six months in jail for knowingly providing a false vehicle identification number when selling an automobile. That’s in addition to a licence suspension of up to a year. (Further changes proposed in November under “Andrew’s Law,” but not yet passed by the legislature, would impose a lifetime driving ban for anyone convicted of dangerous driving causing death.)

Also taking effect in 2026:

■ For homeowners, the Municipal Property Assessment Corporation will now be able to send assessment notices by email.

■ Updates to the Ontario Fire Code require homeowners and landlords to install working carbon monoxide detectors on every floor of a residence. Some detectors monitor for both smoke and carbon monoxide.

■ Parents receiving Canadian Disability Benefits will no long have those payments considered as income when determining eligibility for childcarefee subsidies.

Special economic zones will open the door to backroom deals and insider giveaways, while Indigenous rights, environmental protections, worker rights and local democracy suffer. MIKE SCHREINER ONTARIO GREEN PARTY LEADER

How cheap solar power is transforming economies across Africa

This article was written by Somini Sengupta and was published in the Globe & Mail on January 1, 2026.

**Solar panels are seen in Cape Town, South Africa, in December. Chinese solar panels are finding enormous markets in Africa, where around 600 million people lack reliable electricity.**

Businesses, individuals flock to technology, forcing South African power utility to rethink licensing requirements

Ismet Booley, a dentist in Cape Town, had a serious problem a few years ago. Patients showed up for appointments, only to find the power had gone out.

No power meant no X-rays, no fillings, no root canals. “I just couldn’t work,” Dr. Booley said.

South Africans like Dr. Booley have found a remedy for power cuts that have plagued people in the developing world for years. Thanks to swiftly falling prices of Chinese-made solar panels and batteries, they now draw their power from the sun.

These aren’t the tiny, oldschool solar lanterns that once powered a light bulb or TV in rural communities. Today, solar and battery systems are deployed across a variety of businesses – auto factories and wineries, gold mines and shopping malls. And they are changing everyday life, trade and industry in Africa’s biggest economy.

This has happened at startling speed. Solar has risen from almost nothing in 2019 to roughly 10 per cent of South Africa’s electricity-generating capacity.

No longer do South Africans depend entirely on giant coalburning plants that have defined how people worldwide got their electricity for more than a century. That’s forcing the nation’s already beleaguered electric utility to rethink its business as revenues evaporate.

Joel Nana, a project manager with Sustainable Energy Africa, a Cape Town-based organization, called it “a bottom-up movement” to sidestep a generationsold problem. “The broken system is unreliable electricity, expensive electricity or no electricity at all,” he said. “We’ve been living in this situation forever.”

What’s happening in South Africa is repeating across the continent. Key to this shift: China’s ambition to lead the world in clean energy.

Over the past decade, while the United States ramped up fossil fuel exports, China has focused on dominating renewables. Today, Chinese companies make so many of the world’s solar panels, electric vehicles and batteries that they are slashing prices and scrambling to find buyers.

Tariffs have thwarted them somewhat in the United States and Europe, but they’re finding enormous new markets in Africa, where around 600 million people lack reliable electricity. Across the continent, solar imports from China rose 50 per cent the first 10 months of 2025, continuing a trend, according to a review of Chinese export data by Ember, a British energy-tracking group.

South Africa was the largest destination for Chinese solar, but not the only one. Sierra Leone imported the equivalent of more than half its total current electricity-generating capacity, and Chad, nearly half.

China has much to gain. Not least, new markets and new geopolitical influence. Its companies are doing more than just exporting. State-owned Power China is also building utility-scale solar farms in South Africa, as in other developing economies.

And now China is bidding on contracts from the state-owned utility, Eskom, to add 14,000 kilometres (about 8,700 miles) of transmission lines that South Africa desperately needs to move its increasing supply of solar power around the country.

“Obviously we don’t have money for that,” South Africa’s deputy minister for electricity and energy, Samantha GrahamMaré, said in an interview, referring to the hefty upfront costs of expanding the grid.

Who does? China. Chinese state-owned companies are among several international firms to bid on South Africa’s US$25-billion grid expansion, vying to build the lines and then make money, in part, by operating them. Chinese firms hold similar build-operate contracts in countries including Brazil and the Philippines.

The solar surge does little to address the most pressing social and economic problems of developing countries like South Africa, the need to generate new jobs for millions of young citizens. Installation labour is local, but the panels and batteries are almost all made in China.

“The economic trade-offs are significant,” said Marvellous Ngundu, a researcher with the Institute of Security Studies, a think tank in Pretoria. “Jobs are created elsewhere. South Africa consumes advanced green technologies without capturing the industrial benefits.”

The rapid shift by so many businesses and people to install their own panels and batteries is causing headaches for Eskom, the already troubled utility.

Every kilowatt generated by privately owned solar installations is a hit to its bottom line. Eskom’s coal-burning plants, which provide most of South Africa’s power, are old and in poor shape.

Power cuts have subsided recently, but it wasn’t long ago that Eskom had to turn off electricity to some areas for hours at a time – a practice called “load shedding” that hurt the economy and fed public anger. During the worst days of load shedding, the latest of which came in early 2024, even Ms. Graham-Maré, the deputy electricity minister, installed a solar system in her home. Her energy bill, she said, fell by two-thirds.

Multiply her hack by the thousands and you have what South Africans call Eskom’s “death spiral.” Well-off customers lower their bills with solar, which causes Eskom to lose money, which in turn forces Eskom to raise prices and encourages more people to install solar.

It doesn’t help that some people tap power lines to draw electricity illegally, without paying for it, or that Eskom has suffered years of mismanagement.

In the past five years alone, South Africans installed solar panels representing more than seven gigawatts, or about onetenth of the total installed capacity of 55 gigawatts. Most is privately owned.

Now, unable to beat solar, Eskom is joining solar.

The utility has removed onerous licensing requirements on private installations. It has allowed people to sell power to the grid. And it has tweaked its rates so that customers pay a fixed charge in addition to the cost of any power they consume. Essentially, people pay simply to be connected to the grid, a standard feature in other nations that’s new in South Africa.

Eskom is now planning to erect large solar arrays on the grounds of shuttered coal plants. And by 2040 it intends to shift its predominantly coal-based system to cleaner sources. “That’s where the world is moving,” said Nontokozo Hadebe, Eskom’s sustainability chief.

If the speed of the change is remarkable, it’s still leaving some of South Africa’s most difficult economic problems unresolved, or is making them worse.

The problem, experts said, is that South Africa lacks policies to require local manufacturing. But creating them would drive up costs. The prices of made-in-China panels are by far the lowest in the world.

South Africa’s rapid pivot to Chinese solar gear, as affordable as it is, also doesn’t resolve a basic problem. The country’s poorest citizens still can’t afford to put up their own panels.

They lack the money to buy the gear outright and the ability to get loans.

In Langa township, one of Cape Town’s largest low-income suburbs, one of the rare businesses with solar is Colin Mkosi’s bicycle delivery service, Cloudy Deliveries. His single panel, donated by a charity, powers a few lights and computers. It doesn’t provide nearly enough to charge the electric bikes his business relies on.

The e-bikes are, of course, from China. But his power still comes from South Africa’s unreliable grid. “It’s expensive,” he said, and “we can’t operate without electricity.”

Mr. Mkosi’s wants are part of a broader problem. South Africa buys growing volumes of highvalue technologies from China, while selling it raw materials of limited value. China overtook the U.S. as its biggest trading partner in 2008. With its trade gap rising to more than US$9-billion in 2023, compared with barely US$1-billion in 2000, there are increasing calls to make trade relations with China less unequal.

The difference between South Africa’s trade ties with China and with the U.S. is stark.

U.S. President Donald Trump has imposed a 30-per-cent tariff on South African goods and excluded the government from participating in an international summit of the world’s 20 biggest economies. He has also reversed a Biden administration plan to help the country accelerate its planned closures of its oldest, dirtiest coal plants.

“As relations with the United States have become increasingly strained, Beijing has positioned itself as a reliable and sympathetic partner,” Mr. Ngundu said.

Changes to anti-greenwashing law will increase risk for companies

This opinion was written by Conor Chell and was published in the Globe & Mail on January 1, 2025.

The proposed new amendments to the anti-greenwashing provisions in the federal Competition Act were intended to give businesses some breathing room. But if passed as currently drafted, they may do the opposite and constrain them by creating more legal risk, more uncertainty and a wider gap between what companies say and what they can actually prove.

For the past year, Canada has been home to some of the most stringent and widely discussed anti-greenwashing rules in the world. The original amendments under Bill C-59 required companies making environmental or climaterelated claims about their business to substantiate them using “an internationally recognized methodology.” That language, although imperfect, at least pointed organizations toward established frameworks – the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), the Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Protocol, science-based target methodologies, and third-party assurance practices.

The government has now proposed removing the “internationally recognized methodology” requirement altogether and that change is expected to pass into law in early 2026. In its place, organizations will fall back on the general due-diligence standard that already exists in competition law: claims must be adequately and properly substantiated. On paper, that may sound flexible. In practice, it will be a problem.

Most organizations are not currently set up to substantiate their sustainability and climate-related representations to the level that Canadian courts and regulators have historically required when assessing “adequate and proper” testing.

That threshold – shaped by decades of misleading advertising cases – is surprisingly high. It often requires objective, measurable evidence that is replicable, independently verifiable and directly linked to the claim being made. Many companies making forward-looking climate statements, high-level environmental, social and governance (ESG) claims, or qualitative sustainability assertions simply do not have that level of evidentiary rigour in place.

This wide disconnect exists despite the public believing that businesses are now under stricter scrutiny. The antigreenwashing debate has been frontpage news for months.

The very idea that companies must be prepared to defend their climate and environmental claims has woven itself into Canada’s collective conscience. But removing the methodological requirement will not lower public expectations – it will raise questions about what substantiation means, and whether companies can credibly meet it.

The problem is even more acute when you look at how organizations assess their own readiness. According to KPMG’s most recent Global CEO Outlook, more than 60 per cent of the 1,350 CEOs polled believe they are on track to meet their net-zero ambitions and the sustainability claims underpinning them, yet fewer than 30 per cent have allocated the capital and resources needed to achieve those goals. This creates what I call a “substantiation gap”: companies feel confident enough to make sweeping climate and sustainability claims, but have not invested enough to credibly meet them.

This gap is already visible in practice. In reviewing Canadian companies’ sustainability disclosures, we continue to find numerous misrepresentations. These issues ranged from minor overstatements to material omissions, but the volume alone demonstrates how far many companies still are from the level of evidence regulators and the courts expect.

Some argue that risk will decrease because the government also removed the new private right of access to the Competition Tribunal, which would have allowed private parties to bring greenwashing complaints. But this change is unlikely to meaningfully reduce exposure. In the months since Bill C-59 passed, no private complaints were filed – likely due to the cost, complexity and the inability for complainants to seek monetary damages. Meanwhile, greenwashing allegations have simply migrated elsewhere.

We have already seen:

■ a complaint to the Alberta Securities Commission alleging misleading climate representations,

■ an enforcement proceeding initiated by the Ontario Securities Commission involving similar issues and

■ a civil lawsuit alleging mismanagement of climate-related risks.

In other words, even without a private right of action under the Competition Act, plaintiffs, investors, activists and regulators have found – and will continue to find – other avenues to advance greenwashing claims.

Taken together, these factors point in one direction: legal risk will increase, not decrease, if the proposed amendments are enacted.

Companies will face higher expectations from the public, stricter scrutiny from regulators, more complex evidentiary standards and a growing substantiation gap between what they say and what they can prove.

The solution is not to avoid sustainability disclosures or retreat from climate commitments. It is to professionalize them. Canadian organizations would be well-served to undertake a formal, comprehensive legal risk assessment of their sustainability disclosures and to understand, in concrete terms, what is actually required to substantiate the claims they make.

Clear, credible sustainability communication is not a regulatory burden – it is a competitive advantage. But only if it can withstand scrutiny.

2025 was one of three hottest years on record

Study also finds heat waves have become the deadliest extreme weather events

Exhaust gases billowing from the chimneys of a large coalfired power station in Taean, South Korea. November's UN climate talks in Brazil ended without any explicit plan to transition away from fossil fuels.

This article was written by Alexa St. John and was published in the Toronto Star on December 31, 2025.

Climate change worsened by human behaviour made 2025 one of the three hottest years on record, scientists said.

It was also the first time the three year temperature average broke through the threshold set in the 2015 Paris Agreement of limiting warming to no more than 1.5 C since preindustrial times. Experts say keeping the Earth below that limit could save lives and prevent catastrophic environmental destruction around the globe.

The analysis from World Weather Attribution (WWA) researchers, released Tuesday in Europe, came after a year when people around the world were slammed by the dangerous extremes brought on by a warming planet.

Temperatures remained high despite the presence of a La Niña, the occasional natural cooling of Pacific Ocean waters that influences weather worldwide. Researchers cited the continued burning of fossil fuels — oil, gas and coal — that send planetwarming greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

“If we don’t stop burning fossil fuels very, very, quickly, very soon, it will be very hard to keep that goal” of warming, Friederike Otto, cofounder of World Weather Attribution and an Imperial College London climate scientist, told The Associated Press. “The science is increasingly clear.”

Extreme weather events kill thousands of people and cost billions of dollars in damage annually.

WWA scientists identified 157 extreme weather events as most severe in 2025, meaning they met criteria such as causing more than 100 deaths, affecting more than half an area’s population or having a state of emergency declared. Of those, they closely analyzed 22.

That included dangerous heat waves, which the WWA said were the world’s deadliest extreme weather events in 2025. The researchers said some of the heat waves they studied in 2025 were 10 times more likely than they would have been a decade ago due to climate change.

“The heat waves we have observed this year are quite common events in our climate today, but they would have been almost impossible to occur without human induced climate change,” Otto said. “It makes a huge difference.”

Meanwhile, prolonged drought contributed to wildfires that scorched Greece and Turkey. Torrential rains and flooding in Mexico killed dozens of people and left many more missing. Super Typhoon Fungwong slammed the Philippines, forcing more than a million people to evacuate. Monsoon rains battered India with floods and landslides.

The WWA said the increasingly frequent and severe extremes threatened the ability of millions of people across the globe to respond and adapt to those events with enough warning, time and resources, what the scientists call “limits of adaptation.” The report pointed to Hurricane Melissa as an example: The storm intensified so quickly that it made forecasting and planning more difficult, and pummelled Jamaica, Cuba and Haiti so severely that it left the small island nations unable to respond to and handle its extreme losses and damage.

This year’s United Nations climate talks in Brazil in November ended without any explicit plan to transition away from fossil fuels, and though more money was pledged to help countries adapt to climate change, they will take more time to do it.

Officials, scientists and analysts have conceded that Earth’s warming will overshoot 1.5 C, though some say reversing that trend remains possible.

Yet different nations are seeing varying levels of progress.

China is rapidly deploying renewable energies including solar and wind power — but it is also continuing to invest in coal. Though increasingly frequent extreme weather has spurred calls for climate action across Europe, some nations say that limits economic growth.

Meanwhile, in the U.S., the Trump administration has steered the nation away from clean energy policy in favour of measures that support coal, oil and gas.

As fast shipping increases emissions, delivery has become more polluting

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.

Long a target of backlash, ESG looks to be headed for a rebrand

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.

Res­id­ents seek answers after new recyc­ling sys­tem’s bumpy start

A lack of flex­ib­il­ity

A con­tam­in­ated pro­cess?

Ontario reduces its tar­gets

Prep­ping for the switch

Province to cre­ate `spe­cial eco­nomic zones’ to off­set effects of U.S. tar­iffs

Study also finds heat waves have become the dead­li­est extreme weather events