Donald Trump’s renewed trade war on Canada has revived discussions on where Canada has leverage over its larger neighbour. Energy and natural resource exports, including electricity, oil, gas, thermal coal, potash and other minerals and materials have all been discussed as areas where some form of export restrictions could have large economic impacts on the US.

In fact, the US has telegraphed its own sense of its vulnerabilities through the exceptions it has given from its tariff war on Canada, These have included energy, potash and certain other minerals and materials. There is historical precedent, going back to the original oil crisis of the 1970s, for the imposition of export charges and restrictions on Canadian energy exports to the US in times of crisis. The availability of energy related options was actually reinforced by Trump’s removal of the energy sharing provisions of the original 1988 Canada-US Free Trade Agreement through the 2020 Canada-US-Mexico (CUSMA).

In more specific terms, despite Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s loud threats, Canada’s leverage regarding electricity exports to the US is limited. Among the four exporting provinces, Ontario and BC’s activities are fundamentally transactional, with no firm supply contracts. In the case of Ontario, exports are essential to managing the province’s nuclear heavy electricity system, which produces surplus supply during periods of low demand.

Manitoba and Quebec have held long-term supply contracts to the US based on their large hydro-electric resources. However, their output has fallen dramatically over the past few years as a result of the same climate change induced droughts that have driven wildfires across Canada.

The situation with respect to other export options is also complicated. Canada US trade in fossil gas is increasingly two way, with substantial imports of gas from the US coming into central Canada.

The story with respect to oil is much more one-sided. The US imports nearly four million barrels of oil per day from Canada. An export charge on Canadian oil sold to the US could increase gasoline and other fuel costs in the US. These are already politically sensitive issues in light of the impact of the war that the US and Israel initiated with Iran earlier this year.

Certain minerals and material also represent significant options. Potash exports to the US, which provide the basis for agricultural fertilizers, are perhaps Canada’s strongest card in this regard. Canada provides over 80 per cent of the American supply of potash. The US has no obvious short or medium term alternative source of supply. Other options that have been identified include thermal coal from BC, and supplies of nickel, aluminum and even uranium.

Notwithstanding the objections of the Premiers of Saskatchewan and Alberta to some of these options, particularly around oil and potash exports to the US, there is no question regarding the federal government’s jurisdictional authority to impose export taxes and restrictions on Canadian resources and commodities. That authority would flow from the same jurisdiction over international and interprovincial trade and commerce that enables Ottawa to force pipelines through BC, over that province’s objections, on behalf of Alberta.

In the current circumstances, where the US Administration is increasingly explicit in its threats to Canada sovereignty and autonomy, the federal government could also draw on the ‘emergencies’ branch of its authority to legislate for the “Peace, Order and Good Government” of Canada. Parliament could even use its declaratory power (s.92(10)) to place key facilities or infrastructures under federal jurisdiction.

The challenges with these options are therefore political as opposed to legal or constitutional. Premiers Smith and Moe have rejected the possibility of restrictions or taxes on the export of oil and potash in apocalyptic terms. These responses have significantly weakened Canada’s bargaining position with the US by suggesting divisions on the Canadian side and attempting to take some of Canada’s most powerful points of leverage off the table.

The responses were also profoundly overwrought. No one, at this point, is seriously suggesting (Doug Ford’s rhetorical statements notwithstanding) a complete, overnight shut down of exports of oil and potash to the US as Premiers Smith and Moe seem to be suggesting. But even talking about the possibility reminds the Americans of their exposure. In reality the option would likely take the form of an export tax. In the absence of any ready substitutes for the affected commodities, the effect would be raise costs for US consumers, but to not fundamentally disrupt supply chains and the affected industries on both sides of the border.

Smith, for her part, is playing off the separatist threat in Alberta, in the context of an increasingly shambolic referendum process. There are serious questions about Elections Alberta’s ability to manage the process, and growing suggestions of significant foreign interference, from sources hostile to Canada.

Smith herself has obtained a near complete federal capitulation on energy, environmental and climate matters, and support for her long-sought pipeline to the west coast. Despite this she has indicated her intention to carry through with a full independence referendum in the new year if her initial ‘referendum on a referendum’ succeeds. That is a step even the separatist Parti Québécois in Quebec has deferred until at least after the end of Trump administration. .

Although Ontario Premier Doug Ford has at times been vocal on pushing his provincial counterparts to take a harder line in dealing with the US, his statements on electricity exports are not the only ones that don’t make sense. Ford, for example has called on the federal government to weaken or drop its industrial carbon pricing system in response to the situation in the US. The industrial carbon pricing system is one of the few major elements of Canada’s strategy on climate change to (mostly) survive the Trudeau -Carney transition.

There are serious potential problems with that idea. Although the current US administration doesn’t care about climate change, the people other than the Americans to whom we want to sell things, like the Europeans and China, still very much do. In the case of the EU, there is actually is a system - the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM)) - that charges a form of ‘carbon tariff’ on imports from countries that don’t have carbon pricing systems of their own.

In a wider context, Canada’s best immediate strategy may be to let the economic and political consequences of the Trump administration’s actions play out in the US, subject to minor adjustments, as happened last week on seafood products, to avoid unintended consequences on Canadian industries. Trump’s trade war with Canada is already deeply unpopular in the US, particularly among states with close economic ties to Canada. The President’s Republican Party seems almost certain to loose control of the House of Representatives, and quite possibly the Senate as well, in the upcoming US congressional midterm elections. With those votes barely two months away, there is no need to hand the administration and its party anything that can be portrayed as a ‘win’ on the trade or economic fronts.

In the longer term, Canada will have to confront the likelihood of continuing political and economic instability within the United States. This seems likely to remain the case even if control of the administration and Congress shifts away from the Republican Party through the next rounds of elections. In the end, Canada needs in minimize extent to which our economic and security arrangements are tied to an unreliable southern partner. Instead it needs to expand our relationships with like-minded powers with shared interests in a rules based international order around trade, security, the environment and climate change.

Version published in Canadian Dimension, July 22, 2026

Version published in the Hamilton Spectator, July 26, 2026

The wildfire situation in Northwestern Ontario has drawn growing global attention. There have been extraordinary stories of close calls and narrow escapes from the rapidly advancing fires. Complaints are coming (ironically) from the United States over the impacts of the resulting fire smoke on American cities.

In the short term, attention rightly focused on the immediate responses to the fires. The Ontario and federal governments were slow to recognize the scale and significance of the fires, and the threats they posed to Northern communities. The efforts of local officials to respond to the emergency have been praised, but many communities have expressed feelings of abandonment by the province and Ottawa, both in terms of the lack of warnings, and inadequate responses.

At the same, time, the fires need to be viewed in a longer-term context. Increased incidences of large-scale forest fires, particularly in the boreal region stretching across Canada from Labrador to the Yukon, have been a predicted impact of climate change in Canada for more than three decades.

Major forest fires have become a defining feature of Canadian summers over the past decade. The immediate impacts are severe enough – smoke blanketing large parts of the continent, the loss of communities and homes, and people finding themselves in life-threatening danger.

The fires also represent an important negative feedback loop for the climate. The fires are major sources of GHGs themselves, but more seriously they also signify the ongoing destruction of forests and wetlands in Canada’s boreal region, and crucially of the region’s function as a global scale site for carbon sequestration and storage.

All of this is a product of a larger failure – that of Canadian governments to effectively respond to the threat of climate change before the predicted impacts moved from the realm of modelling and projection into lived reality.

In the case of Ontario, the province had actually made some significant progress on reducing its GHG emissions. The phase-out of coal-fired electricity generation between 2003 and 2013 is widely regarded as the most significant achievement to date among governments in North America to reduce emissions. The province adopted a relatively comprehensive climate change action plan in 2017. That plan included participation in a continent-leading carbon pricing and emission reduction system with Quebec and California.

Then came Doug Ford. On its arrival in June 2018 the Ford government moved immediately to dismantle the previous government’s climate plan, including participation in the Quebec/California emissions cap and trade system. All of the programs, including public transit expansion, building energy efficiency retrofits, and support for the adoption of electric vehicles that would have been funded through the $1 billion/yr generated through the program were cancelled.

Those directions continued with infamous termination of the province’s efforts at renewable energy development, including the cancellation of 743 contracted projects, and the literal pulling of completed wind turbine projects out of the ground. That marked a halt in renewable energy development in the province that lasted until this year, while the rest of the world accelerated ahead. The province’s strategy for improving energy efficiency and energy productivity was also cancelled, on the basis that it was too successful and had achieved its targets early.

The assault on the province’s capacity to address the climate crisis didn’t stop there. The Ford government has since then embarked on a systemic purge of any reference to climate change targets from its planning policies. Efforts by local governments address the challenge by adopting green building standards and other measures have been actively blocked by provincial legislation. The Ontario Energy Board has even proposed to remove consideration of the benefits of GHG emissions reductions from its assessments of utility energy efficiency programs.

Having dismantled virtually all of the province’s policies around climate change, the Ford government explicitly abandoned its GHG reduction targets and plans in its November 2025 economic statement.

Unsurprisingly the province’s GHG emission performance is deteriorating. In 2017 gas-fired generation accounted for 4 per cent of the province’s electricity supply. Now it accounts for nearly 20% of supply and is projected to continue to grow through the 2030s. The province’s overall GHG emissions, which fell as a result of the coal-phaseout and COVID-19 pandemic, are beginning to rise again.

The province’s overwhelmingly nuclear and gas-focused energy plans are poised to push both emissions and costs higher, further undermining decarbonization efforts, as well as competitiveness and affordability.

In this context, this summer’s fires appear as a capstone on portrait of policy failure. They make it clear that ignoring a problem that is rooted in biophysical reality, and trying to legislate it out of existence doesn’t work.

Ontario’s role within Canada makes it capable of reconfiguring the direction of national climate policy. This summer’s wildfires are a signal that it needs to do that. The province needs to both adapt to the reality of a changing climate and its consequences, and develop a serious strategy for not making the problem worse. So far Ontario is failing on both fronts.

Listening to the PM’s ‘Forward Guidance’ statement June 30 on Canada’s Energy Future, there seemed three flawed premises, underlying the statement.

1. What Canada does on climate change has no impact on the Global stage. The Prime Minister’s statement both abandoned Canada’s national commitments under the Paris agreement and effectively committed Canada to a path that will see its GHG emissions increase dramatically though oil sands and LNG expansion, and the growing role of fossil gas-fired electricity generation acknowledged in the May National Electricity Strategy. In reality these steps send very clear signals to the world regarding Canada’s commitment to climate action. The irony in relation to the this summer’s emerging round of wildfire evacuation orders in Canada speaks for itself.

2. Oil sands bitumen production can be made ‘clean’ and globally competitive. The reality is that oil sands bitumen is high energy and GHG emission intensive and relatively low grade product, with limited markets due to the need for specialized refining capacity. In the long term it is unlikely to be able to compete with production from sources that are able to produce high quality liquid crude through conventional drilling and production. Those producers are far more likely to be the last ones standing in a world moving away from fossil fuels for climate and energy security reasons. LNG exports represent a different set of challenges, but remain relatively high cost and impact, due to extraction via fracking and fossil gas-fired liquification processes. Their long term prospects are highly dependent on global market trends.

3. A nuclear-based electrification strategy will provide comparative advantage in energy costs, energy security and advance decarbonization through electrification. Nuclear energy remains one of the the highest cost electricity sources, with little realistic prospect for improvement in foreseeable future. The high electricity costs flowing from the federal government’s nuclear based strategy will undermine affordability, competitiveness and decarbonization.

With Alberta Premier Danielle Smith setting an October 19^th date for a referendum on whether to have a referendum on Alberta separatism, the one thing that is becoming clear, is that there will be many losers in the process, regardless of the ultimate outcome.

Canada

The biggest loser of all will be Canada itself. Smith’s decision to move the ahead with a referendum weakens Canada’s external image of internal unity in face of most serious threats to its sovereignty, economy and environment of the post-Second World War era. These dynamics are reinforced by the potential for election of a Parti Quebecois government in Quebec, committed to a third referendum on sovereignty, in the same month as Alberta’s expected referendum.

Foreign actors with hostile intent towards Canada have not failed to notice these developments. Contacts between leaders of the Alberta separatist movement and the US administration have been widely reported. Evidence of interference by other foreign actors around events in Alberta has also been reported.

The experience of the post-Brexit UK stands in stark testament to the economic damage that can be done by the introduction of an environment of deep uncertainty regarding a country’s political, legal, economic, cultural and social foundations. Quebec’s experience has been referenced as an example of the damage that can be done even when separatist initiatives fail.

Canada’s Climate and Environment

It is already becoming clear that a major focus of the ‘federalist’ “no” campaign in Alberta will be a near complete capitulation by the federal government on climate and environmental issues in Alberta, as a demonstration of Canada’s commitment to co-operative federalism.

These directions seem likely to move well beyond the November 2025 Alberta-Canada MOU, and demand dismantling of much of the federal framework for environmental management, as proposed in the July 2025 Alberta-Saskatchewan-Ontario MOU. These themes are already reflected, in fact, in the federal regulatory streamlining proposals presented earlier this month.

Ottawa’s concessions to Alberta are already triggering demands for similar treatment from other provinces. The federal government has already conceded on the expansion of the Alberta MOU model for industrial carbon pricing across the country. The May federal electricity strategy indicated willingness to further weaken the Clean Electricity Regulations. Saskatchewan, for example, is almost certain to be further emboldened in its defiance of the federal coal-fired electricity phase-out, and on industrial carbon pricing.

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith

Another potential loser in the referendum gambit may be Premier Smith herself. It is less and less clear whether Smith will still be Premier by the time the scheduled referendum rolls around in October. There have been long-standing doubts about Smith’s commitment to keeping Alberta in Canada, given the extent to which she has been seen to enable separatist sentiment within the United Conservative Party (UCP).

The potential for UCP coalition, a product of a merger between Smith’s Wild Rose party and the Alberta Progressive Conservative (PC) party to re-fracture into its constituent parts should not be overlooked. There have always been tensions between the populist, separatist-leaning rural roots of Wild Rose and more moderate (in Alberta terms) and strongly federalist PC wings of the UCP.

These dynamics may be strengthened as the debate unfolds in Alberta. On the one hand the separatist elements of the UCP are likely to continue to reject all efforts at accommodation of Alberta’s demands, as has already occurred over the Canada-Alberta MOU. On the other, there is growing alarm within the Alberta business community, which has traditionally had strong ties to the PC Party, as scale of the threat to Alberta’s status as a stable location for investment posed by the separatist campaign and referendum is recognized.

The situation may lead to pressures on the former PC wing of the UCP to separate itself from its increasingly overtly separatist partners. That could lead to challenges to Smith’s leadership from both wings of the party. It could even threaten the UCP’s legislative majority, triggering an election before the scheduled pseudo- referendum. The outcomes in that scenario are uncertain, but the split between the then emergent Wild Rose party and the PCs was instrumental in the success of Rachel Notley’s NDP in 2015. A similar outcome in 2026 may well be the best prospect for Canada.

Prime Minister Mark Carney

For Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government there are also growing political costs associated with accommodating provincial demands. The federal government’s MOU concessions on climate and environmental matters to Smith’s UCP government, intended to quell separatist sentiment in Alberta, have already clearly failed on that front. At the same time, it has prompted the departure of former federal environment minister Steven Guilbeault from cabinet and now Parliament, and indications of growing discomfort among a substantial number of Liberal MPs over the government’s direction on climate, environment and energy.

Alberta is not the only place the federal government’s attempts to accommodate provincial demands are creating political liabilities. By-elections loom in Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal while the Liberal’s hold the narrowest of majorities. Ottawa’s apparent willingness to engage with the development of another bitumen pipeline to the BC coast cannot play well in Liberal-held ridings around Vancouver and southern Vancouver Island.

In Ontario, the Prime Minister’s hints at a favourable response to Premier Doug Ford’s proposals to expand the Toronto Island airport, over the objections of the City of Toronto, have placed the Toronto Liberal caucus in a very awkward position. Federal MPs are finding themselves under intense pressure from constituents to exercise the federal government’s capacity to veto Ford’s proposal. So far, they have only been able to respond, in light of the Prime Minister’s statements, with commitments to “consultation” with the City and public on the matter.

The bottom line – no one but Canada’s enemies win in Danielle Smith’s version of citizen democracy.

The past few weeks have seen a remarkable ‘flooding of the zone’ with announcements from the federal government related to energy, climate and the environment. The key elements included:

• ·Proposals to further ‘streamline’ federal environmental and safety approvals, principally around natural resource extraction and export projects, as well as nuclear energy.

• ·The announcement of an implementation agreement for the November 2025 Energy and Environment Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Danielle Smith’s Alberta government.

• A national electricity strategy, with a stated focus on clean, affordable, and reliable electricity supplies was released.

The proposals around accelerated approvals for major projects, and the Canada-Alberta MOU Implementation Agreement have drawn considerable attention. Much of the reaction has been critical from the perspectives of climate change, the integrity and transparency of environmental decision-making and the prospects for reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples.

The electricity strategy has drawn less attention, but it is important not to overlook its own implications for energy affordability and security and climate change.

Electricity and Decarbonization

In a climate context , the electricity sector has drawn attention as a major source of GHG emissions itself, and as a potential contributor to GHG emission reductions in other sectors, like industry, transportation and space heating, through electrification. Analyses have suggested that Canada’s achievement of a net zero emission target by 2050 through electrification could require a two-to-three-fold increase in electricity generation by mid-century. Addition growth in demand is projected from new industries as well, particularly Artificial Intelligence (AI) data centres.

It is into this context that the government’s May 14^th strategy was delivered. The plan includes some important elements related to energy efficiency and productivity, and the strengthening of east-west grid connections. However, its overwhelming focus for meeting the projected growth in electricity demand is on fossil gas-fired generation and nuclear energy. The accelerating global movement in the direction of renewable energy is mostly overlooked.

Implications of a gas and nuclear focus for climate and energy security

The reconciliation of this technological focus with the strategy’s stated goals of providing clean, affordable and reliable electricity presents some major challenges. Fossil gas-fired generation is already the source of major growth in electricity related emissions. This is particularly the case in Ontario, where emissions from gas-fired generation have at least quintupled since 2017, and are projected to continue to rise well into the 2030s. There are proposals for major additional gas-fired generation from New Brunswick to British Columbia. The strategy hints at a further weakening of the Clean Electricity Regulations, currently intended to achieve a net zero electricity sector by 2050.

Nuclear energy, for its part, continues to be subject to enormous capital costs and construction delays as ever. Long-standing issues around waste management throughout the nuclear fuel cycle remain unresolved. The global scale safety, security and weapons proliferation risks associated with nuclear power have been highlighted by the wars in Iran and Ukraine. Reliability will be challenged by reactor choices that will be ‘first of kind’ -never built or operated before in Canada, and in some cases, globally.

Both of the core technological choices in the strategy raise serious energy security questions as well. Canada is increasingly reliant on ‘fracked’ fossil gas from the United States for electricity generation. The current proposals for new nuclear reactors seem, unlike the existing CANDU reactors in Ontario and New Brunswick, almost certain to require enriched uranium fuel, which is not produced in Canada. It will have to come from the United States as well.

Costs, Financing and Competitiveness

The plan suggests the cost of its implementation are likely to be in the range of hundreds of billions of dollars, but it is even less clear on how it would be financed, or its impacts on electricity costs. Ontario’s heavily nuclear and gas dependent electricity strategy is already raising alarm over its potential impact on electricity bills, and the implications of those costs for competitiveness, affordability and decarbonization through electrification.

Underlying the plan seems to be an assumption that Canada has a comparative advantage in terms of its ability to provide large volumes of low-cost electricity. Unfortunately, that is a view very much rooted in past, not the future.

Historically, some parts of Canada have had comparative advantages in electricity supply and costs due to availability of readily accessible large-scale hydroelectric resources. The experiences of Ontario, Quebec, BC, Manitoba, and Labrador are prominent in this regard. Power from Niagara Falls for example, provided the basis for industrialization around the western end of Lake Ontario in the first half of the 20th Century.

The situation going forward is more complicated. The supply of readily developable large hydro-electric sites in Canada is mostly exhausted. The experiences with the Site C development in BC and Muskrat Falls project in Labrador, have highlighted the economic, technological, environmental and political risks associated with new large hydro projects.

Paths Towards Decarbonization, Affordability, and Sustainability

The implication is that future expansions of electricity supply will come from technologies where Canada has no inherent comparative advantage - gas and nuclear as suggested in the federal strategy, or non-large hydro renewable energy sources, like wind and solar. There policy instability has left Canada falling behind the global trajectory of accelerating expansion.

The situation suggests two important areas of focus. The first, in the absence of obvious cost advantages, will be to control energy costs through the maximization of energy efficiency and productivity. Secondly, on the supply side, although largely overlooked in the federal plan, non-large hydro renewables offer the best option for capacity expansion given their low costs, operational and planning flexibility, scalability, relatively short planning and construction timeframes, wide range of commercially proven and available technologies, low GHG and broader environmental impacts, and avoidance of the geopolitical and cost risks associated with dependency on out-of-country fuel supply chains. These were the rationales driving renewables development globally even before the US-Israel-Iran War.

Large scale deployment of renewables will require making optimal use of new and existing energy storage capacity, regional interties and grid management technologies. Meeting critical winter peaks will remain a challenge in parts of the country subject to sustained overnight temperatures below in the mid –20s. But an electricity strategy rooted in energy productivity, and renewable energy expansion remains Canada’s best option for decarbonization, affordability, competitiveness and sustainability.

The past week saw remarkable ‘flooding of the zone’ with announcements from the federal government related to energy, climate and the environment. The key elements included:

· Proposals to further ‘streamline’ federal environmental and safety approvals, principally around natural resource extraction and export projects, as well as nuclear energy related projects.

· The release of a national electricity strategy, with a stated focus on clean, affordable, and reliable electricity supplies; and

· The announcement of an implementation agreement for the November 2025 Energy and Environment Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Danielle Smith’s Alberta government.

Each of these initiatives carries significant environmental and economic trade-offs and risks. Collectively the announcements provide some clear signals on the government’s direction on climate, environment, economic and political strategy.

Major Projects Approvals

The first of the initiatives announced, of federal approvals reform, effectively proposes to extend the Bill C-5 model of accelerated approvals for projects deemed to be in the national interest, more broadly. The initiative would not just affect the federal impact Assessment process, itself already increasingly subordinated to provincial processes, or by-passed altogether.

The government’s proposals would also significantly alter the wider federal regime for environmental protection, from protection of fish habitat and species at risk, to the dumping of waste in the ocean. There are also proposals to create Federal Economic Zones, apparently based on the Ontario Ford government’s Bill 5 ‘special economic zones,’ where reviews of individual projects would be “removed,”.

The basic model underlying the proposals is one of political pre-approval – projects designated as being in national interest by the cabinet would move towards regulatory approval through a streamlined ‘technical’ review process, regardless what those reviews might find in terms of environmental impacts, economic and technical viability, and risks to public safety and health. Approval of nuclear projects would effectively be politicized, moving decision-making authority from the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission to the federal cabinet.

The government’s proposals have been described as ‘worse than’ the Harper government’s notorious Bill C-38, and as turning the ‘clock back’ decades in terms of the Ottawa’s approach to environmental matters.

Aside from the environmental, climate, economic and safety implications of short circuited reviews, the effectiveness of this sort of ‘streamlining’ approach in achieving faster outcomes an is open question. Bill C-5 has already triggered intensifying political and legal conflicts, particularly with Indigenous peoples over the recognition of their rights and interests within approval processes.

The tortuous and enormously costly pathway of Trans Mountain pipeline, along with many other cases, highlights the potential for efforts at streamlining to backfire, into further delays and growing political and economic costs. Projects tend to run into trouble not because of regulatory requirements, but because they are poorly conceived, subject to serious doubts about their economic and technical viability, raise major safety, health and environmental concerns, or are seen to disregard the rights and interests of Indigenous peoples.

The National Electricity Strategy

Although including some important elements related to energy efficiency and productivity, and the strengthening of east-west grid connections, the overwhelming focus of the government’s May 14 strategy for meeting projected growth in electricity demand is on fossil gas-fired generation and nuclear power. The accelerating global movement in the direction of renewable energy is mostly overlooked.

The reconciliation of this technological focus with the strategy’s stated goals of providing clean, affordable and reliable electricity presents some major challenges. Fossil gas-fired generation is already the source of major growth in electricity related emissions, particularly in Ontario.

Nuclear energy continues to be subject to as enormous capital costs and construction delays as ever. Long-stating issues around waste management issues through its fuel cycle, and global scale safety, security and weapons proliferation risks remain unresolved. Reliability will be challenged by reactor choices that will be ‘first of kind’ -never built or operated before in Canada, and in some cases, globally.

Both technological choices raise serious energy security questions as well. Canada is increasingly reliant on ‘fracked’ fossil gas from the United States for electricity generation. Current proposals for new nuclear reactors will require enriched uranium fuel, also to be supplied from the US.

Alberta-Canada MOU Implementation

The final piece in puzzle, the Canada-Alberta MOU Implementation Agreement, is widely seen as weakening Ottawa’s approach to industrial carbon pricing - the one of the few major climate policies of the previous government still standing - not just in relation to Alberta, but nationally. The expected national carbon price would be lowered from $175 to $130/tonne and the time frame for its application extended to 2040.

The federal clean electricity regulations would also be effectively withdrawn, via an equivalency agreement under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, as they apply to Alberta. That will likely trigger similar demands from other provinces. Moreover, Ottawa and Alberta are now committed to the commencement of work on a new bitumen pipeline to the BC coast as early as September 2027, and by implication the expansion of oil sands production, as well.

Implications for Governance and Canada’s future Trajectories

Beyond their implications for Canada’s climate and environmental commitments, the federal initiatives say a great deal about the underlying government’s political and economic strategies:

• The economic vision flowing from the announcements seems overwhelmingly focused on natural resources extraction and export. The places of, for example, more value-added processing and manufacturing activities, and services, beyond an enthusiasm for AI, are unclear.

• The announcements carry a striking implicit concession of policy leadership on environmental, climate and economic policy matters to the provinces. This is particularly stark in relation to the Ford government in Ontario and Smith government in Alberta.

• The major projects approval proposals highlight again the emerging role of the Major Projects Office (MPO) as a government within a government, where the initiatives contained in the May 12 proposal are reported to have been developed without consultations with the affected ministers, departments and agencies.

• The initiatives are again raising questions about whether Canada has abandoned any serious commitments to action on climate change

• The major project approvals initiatives are being seen as a signaling of a willingness to sacrifice wider environmental considerations in seeking investment. Such an approach could be interpreted as offering Canada as a pollution ‘haven’ for the mining, fossil fuel and nuclear industries.

• There is alarm over the implications of the government’s proposals for the rights and interests of indigenous peoples, who are likely to bear the brunt of the environmental and social burdens of resource extraction.

• There seems a disregard Canada’s own energy security interests in the implicit dependence of the proposed electricity strategy on fracked natural gas and enriched uranium from the United States. There also seems a lack of concern for domestic energy costs, particularly around electricity, and their implications for competitiveness, affordability and decarbonization through electrification.

In the result, more than a few Canadians have been left asking that if this is the cost of being an energy superpower, is it worth it in terms of the climate, environment, reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples, energy security and affordability, and open and transparent governance?

At the same time, the biophysical consequences of climate change, biodiversity loss, and challenges around water and materials sustainability continue to intensify. Canadians may well ask if there aren’t better pathways to sustainability, economic and energy security, and decarbonization.

At the end March, the NB Power Review Panel report recommended considering building a new large nuclear reactor at the Point Lepreau site in New Brunswick. That recommendation raises a series of questions, not least whether the province can afford a new reactor, how it would be paid for, and its impact on electricity rates and the province’s overall financial position. The situation in New Brunswick would have wider implications as well, particularly smaller provinces considering nuclear projects, like Saskatchewan.

In the case of New Brunswick a new reactor has been in the cards since 2023, when NB Power and the provincial government published plans calling for 600 megawatts (MW) of new nuclear power by 2035 at the Point Lepreau site on the Bay of Fundy.

The original plan was to build two small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs). After spending almost $130 million in public funds for SMR development, New Brunswick found it couldn’t attract the private investment needed to move forward.

The NB Power Review Panel strongly advised against SMRs, echoing a statement by New Brunswick Energy Minister René Legacy six months ago. He rejected the notion of building first-of-a-kind SMRs because of the technological and economic risks associated with their incomplete and unproven designs.

Instead, the review panel recommended that the province consider “initiating the planning assessment phase for an additional large scale, proven technology nuclear plant to be sited alongside the Point Lepreau facility.”

The last new full-scale nuclear reactor project in Canada, the Darlington nuclear power plant east of Toronto, was completed more than 30 years ago. The enormous cost overruns on that project contributed significantly to the effective bankruptcy of the province’s utility, Ontario Hydro, leading to its eventual break-up.

As the memories of these previous experiences with large nuclear construction projects have faded, new projects are now being proposed. These projects, and experiences with the handful of new-build nuclear projects initiated in Europe and the United States in the last two decades, give us some indication of the large reactor options, and their potential costs.

In Ontario and Alberta, two reactor designs, the CANDU MONARK and the Westinghouse Electric AP1000, have been considered for the expansion of the Bruce Nuclear power plant on Lake Huron, a proposed 10,000-MW Ontario Power Generation plant at Wesleyville on Lake Ontario, and the proposed 4,800-MW Peace River Nuclear Project in Alberta.

The 1,000-MW CANDU MONARK, intended as a successor to the existing CANDU reactors in Ontario and New Brunswick. Although it’s being aggressively promoted to potential international customers, the MONARK design remains incomplete. The situation has already led the Alberta project’s proponents to switch their proposal to favour the AP1000 design by Westinghouse Electric.

Cost information is available on the AP1000 reactor, as two units were completed in 2024 at the Vogtle nuclear power plant in Georgia. The total estimated cost of those two 1,100-MW reactors was US$36 billion, or about $26 billion per reactor in 2026 Canadian dollars. The plant has been described as “the most expensive power plant ever built on Earth.” When it went into service, Vogtle resulted in a nearly 24% increase in Georgia Power’s electricity rates, the largest jump in the utility’s history.

AtkinsRéalis (formerly SNC Lavalin) is currently pitching the CANDU MONARK to Poland, with a reported estimated cost of $45 to $50 billion for a three-reactor plant, or about $15 billion per unit, although the reactor design itself remains in flux.

The implication of these experiences and proposals is that a new 1,000-MW reactor could carry a price tag of $15 to $26 billion. Estimates of the costs of electricity needed to cover the capital costs of new nuclear plants, if they’re financed through electricity rates, range from the mid-20¢ to more than 40¢ per kilowatt-hour. In the case of New Brunswick , that would nearly double to even triple current consumer electricity costs. Such increases would undermine energy affordability, economic competitiveness, and any plans for decarbonization through electrification.

A province could also try to finance the costs through its general tax base. That is the approach that Ontario seems to be taking, at an estimated cost to the provincial treasury of $7 to $8.5 billion per year. Electricity subsidies now account for more than half of Ontario’s deficit, exceeding annual capital expenditures on education and health care by wide margins.

In the case of a small province like New Brunswick, the annual costs of that approach, even spread over the decade or more of construction, could exceed the province’s current, record $1.39 billion deficit, and match or exceed its entire annual capital spending plans in all other areas. Adding the cost to New Brunswick Power’s current $6-billion debt would further cripple the utility and likely put it on a path to the kind of de facto bankruptcy that befell Ontario Hydro.

Saskatchewan, for its part, has another idea – asking the federal government to pay three-quarters of the cost of the province’s first nuclear reactor, a contribution of between $11 to $20 billion from federal taxpayers.

In addition to the financial risks a single large reactor in a relatively small electricity system would repeat and magnify a key problem associated with the original Lepreau project in New Brunswick —putting very higher portion of a province’s electricity supply eggs in a single, very expensive and high-risk basket.

All of this should suggest a great deal of caution among provinces considering adding large nuclear components for their electricity systems, and a need to think about other ways of decarbonizing their electricity systems while ensuring their affordability and sustainability.

An earlier version of this commentary was published by The Energy Mix on April 9.

Mark Winfield is a professor at the Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change at York University in Toronto, and co-chair of the faculty’s Sustainable Energy Initiative. Susan O’Donnell is adjunct research professor and lead researcher on the CEDAR project in Sustainability and Environmental Studies at St. Thomas University.

Hidden behind the extraordinary international events of the past few weeks, including the Isreal-US-Iran war, the period following the tabling of Ontario’s 2026 budget has been defined by a flurry of legislative changes and policy announcements. The government’s proposals have ranged from limiting the scope of the Freedom of Information Act as it applies to activities involving the premier and minsters offices, to taking effective control of public school boards, and aggressive support for the expansion of the Toronto Island Airport.

On the surface all of these moves might suggest an active government with a clear agenda. A closer look, however, suggests some familiar, but disturbing, trends in the behaviour of the Ford government.

Centralizing Authority

One of the defining features of the government’s governing style, which has accelerated dramatically following its re-election in February 2025, has been to shift authority away from local and governments and independent agencies, and into the hands of the province. The government’s Bill 5 – The Protect Ontario Act, passed last June, has been perhaps the most extreme example, with its empowerment of the provincial cabinet to designate “Special Economic Zones” where no rules - provincial or municipal - may apply.

But the pattern extends much further. Bills currently before the Legislature would prescribe and constrain the scope of municipal planning activities (Bill 98 Schedule 7), remove any references to climate change from the province’s planning policies, block municipalities from adopting green building standards and other climate and energy related measures, including requirements for EV charging facilities. Conservation Authorities would be consolidated and brought under closer provincial control, effective control would be taken over municipal transit systems, and regional government chairs in areas like Niagara, replaced with provincial appointees.

These moves follow on from previous initiatives to constrain the work of local drinking water Source Water Protection Committees – themselves legacies of the May 2000 Walkerton water disaster. The widespread and arbitrary use of Ministerial Zoning Orders, and other overrides of local and provincial planning policies and decisions to favour development interests have become routine - most famously in the case of the Greenbelt land removal scandal - but in many other instances as well.

The province’s recent threats to expropriate the Toronto Island Airport lands, and (presumably) legislate the City’s agreement to amend the federal-provincial-city agreement governing the airport to allow for jets and higher traffic volumes fits within the pattern. There have been further provincial ‘reach-downs’ into local matters on everything from bike lanes to speed cameras. The targets have all been areas which have been important sources of community level policy innovation.

What emerges is a consistent pattern of the concentration of authority in the hands of province as the solution to all problems. In practice, this increasingly means the Premier’s office, as individual ministers, with the possible exception of the finance minister, seem to have little or no autonomy to act outside of direction from the centre.

Doug Ford: Mayor of Ontario?

This approach does accord with the often-sited description of the premier’s governance style as being that of a municipal councilor or small town mayor. The goal appears to be to concentrate authority in the premier’s hands to be able respond to the requests of ‘constituents’ who happen to have the necessary access and connections to his office. That model would account for, among other things, the government’s sensitively around Freedom of Information requests related to the activities of the premier’s and minister’s offices. Such requests could reveal both interactions with lobbyists, and the resulting changes in policies and directions to the public service .

It would also explain why the Ford government again seems to be adrift, and following whatever direction comes to it from the right sources - notably developers, farmers, resource industries, and embedded incumbents in the energy sector. The challenge for the Ford government has always been that it has no clear idea what the provincial government should actually do other than cut taxes and ‘red tape,’ and more recently, build big things - whether they make sense or not. In Ford’s case, that orientation has always been combined with a limited understanding or acceptance of the notion of limits on executive power in government.

Thin Mandates and Sinking Polls

The government survived both the 2022 and 2025 elections, despite growing public dissatisfaction with its performance and sentiments of a need for a change, because it effectively had agendas imposed on it by external events: the COVID-19 pandemic in 2022; and the Trump ‘51^st state’ crisis 2025.

In both cases, however, it is important to recall the thinness of the electoral mandates actually obtained by the Ford government. Both elections were defined by the lowest voter turnouts in Ontario history. In the result, in both cases, Ford’s overwhelming majorities in the Legislature actually rested on the ballots of the less than 20 per cent of eligible voters in the province who voted Progressive Conservative (2022 44.02% voter turnout x 40.83 of popular vote = 18%; 2025 45.4% voter turnout x 42.97% of popular vote = 19.5%). The results were perhaps more testaments of voter disengagement than definitive mandates.

Recent polling suggests that the feeling of a need for a change in government in Ontario has reached the 70 per cent mark. The government is deep underwater on its handling of most substantive policy issues, particularly on high profile questions like housing and the cost of living.

Despite this, a significant change in direction from the government itself seems unlikely. The next election is likely three years off, and there are no apparent challengers to Ford’s leadership in either the PC cabinet or caucus. The NDP official opposition continues to struggle to find an effective counter to Ford’s populist appeal, even as it takes on more authoritarian aspects, while the Ontario Liberal Party is again searching for a leader.

Ottawa’s Role

The federal government holds considerable potential influence over Ontario’s direction. It has variety of forms of approval authority over the Ford government’s increasingly grandiose infrastructure projects from highways to nuclear power plants and the Toronto Island Airport expansion. It is also, at least in theory, is the guarantor of the rights of Indigenous Peoples, and of those Ontarians more generally under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Both have been regularly threatened by the Ford government. Federal funding is a significant factor in the province’s plans for the auto, steel, mining and nuclear sectors. But so far Ottawa seems content to play the role of Doug Ford’s enabler, partner and financer. Some greater distance may make sense for both substantive policy and political reasons, particularly given the Ford government’s recent polling numbers.

Looking Ahead

The overall result for Ontarians is a province where decision-making is more and more centralized and driven by those with the right connections and access. Local innovation and independent decision-making are being deliberately curtailed. The result is almost certain to be a province that is less creative, flexible, adaptive, resilient, democratic and dynamic, at a time when geopolitical circumstances require precisely those attributes. Although the fall of Hungary’s Victor Orban demonstrates that deeply embedded populist autocrats can be defeated, it could be a long three years for Ontario.

One of the central unanswered questions about the Ford government’s nuclear expansion plans for Ontario has been how they will be paid for? The program includes new nuclear power plants at Darlington, Bruce and Wesleyville, and the refurbishments of existing reactors at the Bruce, Pickering and Darlington sites. Estimates of the capital costs of the government’s plans, based on past projects and recent experiences in the US and Europe, exceed $400 billion dollars.

The government’s plans envision an electricity system that is 75 per cent nuclear in terms of output, up from approximately 50 per cent today. If the costs of these plans are to be paid for through the rates charged for the electricity produced, electricity bills will rise dramatically. Estimates of the costs of electricity from new nuclear plants in Ontario range from the mid-20 cents per Kwh to over 40 cents per Kwh – double or even triple current consumer electricity costs. Such increases would undermine energy affordability, Ontario’s economic competitiveness and any plans for decarbonization through electrification.

Another alternative could be to hide the capital costs as debt, while keeping hydro rates low. That was the strategy followed by previous governments with the province’s original nuclear construction program between the1966 and 1993. In the end, the accumulation of debt flowing from that approach reached $38 billion (~$72 billion in current dollars), leaving the provincial utility, Ontario Hydro, economically inviable and effectively bankrupt.

A series of revelations over the past few months have made it clear that the province seems to have another, potentially equally problematic plan, in mind. It has become apparent that the 29 per cent increase in electricity rates on November 1^st was directly related to the financing arrangements for the $25 billion Ontario Power Generation’s Darlington new build reactor project, and the $26 billion refurbishment of the Pickering B nuclear station.

The impact on residential hydro bills of the November increase was mitigated through a near doubling of the province’s electricity rebate program, at a cost of approximately $2 billion/yr, paid out of general revenues. That meant that, in effect, the province had begun paying for the capital costs of the Darlington and Pickering projects out of general provincial revenues. Moreover, recent changes to Ontario Energy Board rules have created an unprecedented situation where ratepayers and taxpayers are now being asked to pay for nuclear projects that may never be completed or function.

The November increase in the rebate program brought the total costs of the province’s electricity rate subsidy programs to approximately $8.5 billion/yr. These expenditures now amount to the equivalent of nearly two-thirds of the province’s deficit, exceed total expenditures in the Justice sector, and are approximately double the annual capital investments in both schools and health care.

The Pickering B and Darlington new build projects are only the beginnings of the province’s nuclear expansion plans. Additional projects proposed for Wesleyville and the Bruce nuclear site could involve capital expenditures in excess of $300 billion. If financed in the same way, the portion of the provincial budget consumed by electricity subsidies could reach $20 billion/yr - nearly 10 per cent of the province’s total budget - forcing either dramatic increases in the provincial deficit - to over $30 billion/yr, substantial tax increases or major reductions in spending in other - already in the view of many - chronically underfunded areas like health care, education, municipal and social services, and non-electricity public infrastructures.

There is, however, another, and better option. None of the province’s plans have been subject to any external review in terms of the economic, technological or environmental rationality. Moreover, the province’s plans seem premised on assumptions of absolute technological, economic, social, environmental, and political certainty reaching decades into the future. These are things about which, in a ruptured and destabilized world, there can only be absolute certainty of uncertainty. The situation adds to the risks of the province locking into a deeply inflexible energy pathway centred on large, high-cost, and high-risk, generating assets.

Ontario has been the subject of more efforts to develop and model alternative pathways for its electricity system, and the broader decarbonization of its energy system, than any other province in Canada. But there is no process to assess whether the directions set by the provincial government represent the best options for the province in economic and environmental terms relative to the alternative pathways that have been identified.

That situation needs to change rapidly. The province needs to engage in a serious, objective and independent assessment of its energy options for meeting future energy needs, while controlling costs, decarbonizing the province’s electricity system and advancing sustainability, before its too late

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November 30, 2025

Parents and small children are likely to be familiar with Laura Joffe Numeroff’s classic childrens’ book “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie.” In the story, a child giving a mouse a cookie leads to a cascading series of additional requests, with the fulfillment of each ask being followed by a new demand, until the cycle begins again.

The story seems an apt analogy for the emerging relationship between Mark Carney’s federal government and that of Danielle Smith in Alberta. The Canada-Alberta Memorandum of Agreement (MoU) signed last week, grants the Alberta premier a lengthy federal wishlist: agreement to pursue “one or more” new bitumen pipelines providing access to Asian markets over and above any potential expansion of the capacity of the existing Trans Mountain (TMX) pipeline; an “appropriate adjustment” to the federal ban on oil tanker traffic off the Northwest BC coast; a removal of the prospect of a federal cap on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the oil and gas sector; an immediate “suspension” for Alberta of the application of the federal Clean Electricity (CER) Regulations; and the removal of ‘anti-greenwashing’ provisions in the Competition Act.

In exchange, there are commitments around the expansion of carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS) in Alberta - a technology whose effectiveness and economic viability remains the subject of major debates - specifically the expansion of the voluntary, industry-led, Pathways Alliance, CCUS initiative. Both the CER suspension, which is of immediate effect, and the termination of the concept of an oil and gas sector emissions cap, are tied to the strengthening of the industrial carbon pricing system in Alberta, something recently substantially weakened by Smith’s government. The likely effectiveness of even an enhanced industrial carbon pricing regime relative to firm regulatory emission limits and caps is at best an open question. Previous federal climate plans had assumed the presence of both regulatory limits and higher carbon prices than the $130/tonne level articulated in the agreement.

The new pipeline capacity is intended to be private sector constructed and financed, with Indigenous Peoples co-ownership, with a proposal submitted to the federal Major Projects Office by April 2026.

The Canada-Alberta agreement has already prompted the resignation of a high-profile minister from Prime Minister Carney’s government. It has also led to intense intergovernmental conflicts with the Government of British Columbia and the Coastal First Nations in B.C., neither of whom seem to have been consulted on the agreement’s contents.

Not satisfied with major reversals of federal climate policies - likely to put the achievement of Canada’s domestic and international GHG emission reduction targets even further out of reach – and these other outcomes - the Alberta premier, always playing to her rural United Conservative Party (UCP) base, has already launched a new set of demands from Ottawa, this time around gun control.

The cascade of demands set off by the Federal-Alberta MOU is unlikely to stop there. Other provinces, particularly those, like Saskatchewan, Ontario, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, whose electricity systems continue to be strongly dependent on fossil fuel-fired generation, are almost certain to demand exemptions from the Clean Electricity Regulations of their own. This would effectively render the rules, a central element of the plan to achieve Canada’s GHG emission reduction targets, meaningless. Saskatchewan is likely to go even further, demanding an exemption from the federal coal-fired electricity phase-out regulations as well.

A similar series of demands followed the Trudeau government’s fall 2023 exemption of heating fuel oil from the federal backstop carbon pricing regime, mostly in response to concerns in Atlantic Canada. The result was provincial calls from across the country for the exemption of all types of heating fuels, setting in motion a chain of events that ended with the demise of the overall federal consumer carbon pricing backstop system earlier this year.

The Alberta-Canada MoU follows a more recent playout of the same patterns between Ottawa and the provinces. In the face of the trade and security challenges being presented by the incoming second Trump administration, Prime Minister Carney’s government initially attempted to make peace with the provinces through the controversial Bill C-5 – The Building Canada Act. The legislation potentially exempts projects identified as being of “national interest” from federal environmental and other legislation. That effort was promptly met with an MoU among Alberta, Saskatchewan and Ontario demanding the wholesale withdrawal of federal environmental rules that might get in the way of resource development projects.

It is also important to remember the record of behaviour on the part of the Smith government in Alberta that the Canada-Alberta MoU rewards. Premier Smith has been unqualified in her support for an expanded oil and gas industry in her province. She was swift to reach out to the Trump administration independently of Ottawa or the other provinces. Her government then sought to undermine what remains likely Canada’s strongest potential point of leverage in dealing with the US – its dependence on Canadian oil and gas exports, which could be restricted or taxed. Smith threatened a “constitutional crisis” if there was any attempt to use that leverage against the Americans.

Moreover, Smith’s government has adopted rules severely restricting renewable energy development within Alberta. That, by implication, makes any significant further decarbonization of Alberta’s electricity system virtually impossible, even with a strengthened carbon pricing system.

In wider terms, Smith’s United Conservative Party (UCP) government has invoked the ‘notwithstanding clause’ (s.33) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms no less than four times in the three months. The clause has been used to attempt to shield legislation ordering striking teachers back to work, and laws affecting transgender people, from legal review in terms of their consistency with Charter-protected rights.

In this context, the message sent from Ottawa by the Canada-Alberta MoU regarding the conduct of provincial governments around climate change, the environment, trade, labour and human rights, Indigenous Peoples and in their dealings with each other, is anything but helpful.

Ottawa is already going to enormous ends to satisfy provincial demands on multiple fronts. National unity is important in the face of the Trump threat. But limits still need to be placed on the behaviour of provincial governments, lest, like Numeroff’s mouse, they demand an unending supply of more cookies, with little gratitude in return.

https://news.ontario.ca/en/release/1006772/ontario-greenlights-pickering-nuclear-generating-station-refurbishment-to-create-nearly-37000-jobs

The estimated capital cost, at $26.8 billion is more than double the projected capital cost for the Darlington Refurbishment ($12.8 billion). This is substantially higher than previous estimates, reflecting Pickering B’s age, which reached the end of its designed life in 2015.

Based on the announced the capital costs, the electricity costs from a refurbished Pickering B would likely be in the 20 cents+ per kwh range, well above the current mid-peak costs for consumers, and well above the costs of renewables + storage, DERs, or energy productivity/efficiency, and likely too high to be a viable export option to the US. These additional costs will undermine affordability, competitiveness and efforts at decarbonization through electrification, the primary decarbonization option for transportation, space heating and industry.

The refurbishment of Pickering B was assessed by OPG as uneconomic and unnecessary in 2009.

A refurbishment retains a nuclear facility in what is now a densely populated urban area, a location where it is very unlikely a new nuclear facility would now be licenced. There are also longstanding concerns about the geological stability of the Pickering site.

The shutdown and refurbishment almost certainly mean the province will burn even more fossil gas to meet electricity needs, with the implications of additional emissions of GHGs and smog precursors. This is particularly the case given the lack of movement on alternative generation or productivity options, including renewables and DERs.

Maintaining a high nuclear component in the province’s electricity system reduces planning and operational flexibility, particularly as loads become more dynamic, and increases the likelihood of surplus baseload generation and exports at near

-zero or even negative prices.

The situation again strengthens the case for a meaningful external review of the province’s electricity plans in terms of their cost-effectiveness and economic and environmental sustainability.

The Ontario government of Premier Doug Ford’s disregard for the environment is well known. It has been described as possessing the worst environmental record of any Ontario government of the modern (post Second World War) era.

Regulatory and policy frameworks around industrial water pollution, endangered species, mining, environmental assessment, hazardous and municipal waste management, and land-use planning, including a notorious attempt to remove lands from the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area (GTHA) Greenbelt, have been dismantled or ‘streamlined’ to the point of meaninglessness.

Bill 5, the Protect Ontario by Unleashing our Economy Act, adopted in parallel to the federal government’s Bill C-5 – Building Canada Act, set a wider framework for any remaining rules to be waived at the discretion of the provincial cabinet. This has been accompanied by the systemic removal of requirements for transparency, accountability and public input into decision-making, including the downgrading of the status of the province’s office of the Environmental Commissioner.

Given all of this, it might be asked what remains to be undone. Yet the past few weeks have seen a new chain of announcements and legislation directed at what remains of the province’s framework for environmental protection. Two key focal points have been climate change and water protection in rural areas.

Abandoning Climate Change

On climate, there is an explicit abandonment of the province’s climate change targets, buried on the last page of the government’s fall 2025 economic statement. That move followed on from an ECO/Auditor General report documenting the province’s dismal performance on implementing its own climate plan and reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

The government’s move came as the evidence of the impacts of a changing climate have become more and more apparent. Wildfire smoke has become a regular feature of summers in southern Ontario cities, prompting air quality alerts, something not seen since the phase-out of coal-fired electricity a decade ago. Having lived off the benefits of that initiative by previous governments, and the impacts of the pandemic, the province’s GHG emissions are now rising, particularly in the electricity sector, as reliance on gas-fired generation has more than quadrupled.

The province’s actions have not been limited to its own goals and standards. It is also now seeking to further disable or block efforts around the environment and climate change at the local level. The province’s reach into local matters around governance and land-use planning is well-established. Bill 17, adopted in June, contained provisions that seemed designed to block local Green Building standards. Then the province abruptly repealed the City of Toronto’s Green Roof bylaw. Complaints from the development industry about the up-front costs of higher building standards, while ignoring climate and long-term operating cost benefits, would seem the obvious motive.

Endangering Drinking Water Protection

On water, Bill 56, the omnibus Building a More Competitive Economy Act, adopted in October, weakened the already feeble source water protection regime that flowed from the report of the public inquiry into the May 2000 Walkerton drinking water disaster. The province is also proposing to move on-farm sewage treatment systems for housing for agricultural workers, to what is effectively a self-regulatory regime. Small, private sewage and water systems of this kind were identified as an area of high risk to drinking water safety by the same Inquiry.

These measures have been accompanied by a proposal to consolidate the province’s 38 conservation authorities. The authorities play central roles in source water protection, flood control, and watershed management, into 7 larger entities. The move is widely seen as an effort to further marginalize the roles of the authorities in the planning process, and to break their connections to specific watersheds and local governments.

No limits to what’s next?

With no signs of concern or restraint with the PC government and legislative caucus itself, there are few effective limits on the future scope of provincial action, despite its increasingly ‘authoritarian populist‘ governance style. Aggressive moves in support of the mining industry could prompt further constitutional challenges from Indigenous Peoples, whose rights cannot be invalidated through provincial legislation.

Charter of Rights and Freedoms-based litigation has achieved some successes, such as the challenge to bike lane removals in Toronto. It has even been suggested that one of the motives for the formal abandonment of climate targets was to undermine the ongoing Charter challenge to the government’s failure to act on climate change. But Charter-based litigation is complex, and even successful results can be at risk of being overridden via the Charter’s s.33 “notwithstanding” clause, something the Ford government has shown a willingness to do.

Ottawa’s Role - Constraint or Enabler?

The final potential constraint on the province’s actions is Ottawa. The federal government does hold constitutionally-based legislative vetos over projects where specific federal approvals are required, such as under the Fisheries Act regarding the harmful alteration or destruction of fish habitat, the Species at Risk Act with respect to endangered species, the Navigation Protection Act in relation to navigable waters, and the Canadian Nuclear Safety and Control Act regarding nuclear energy projects. The federal government has also contributed considerable financing to projects prioritized by the Ford government in the auto, steel, mining and nuclear sectors.

The Trudeau government initially challenged the Ford government over its behaviour on climate change and other environmental issues. However, in the aftermath of the Progressive Conservative victory in the 2022 provincial election, it has, at best, turned a blind eye to Ontario’s actions.

Despite growing GHG emissions from the electricity sector, Ottawa re-wrote its proposed Clean Electricity Regulations to facilitate adding more carbon-intensive gas-fired generation to Ontario’s electricity system. The federal government has also stepped back from examining the environmental consequences, including those clearly falling within federal jurisdiction, of the Ford government’s major infrastructure projects, like Highway 413, and the Bradford Bypass.

Instead, Ottawa has, at times, gone out of its way to enable the Ford government’s agenda. The proposed new-build nuclear reactors at the Darlington site - a project that demands greater, not less scrutiny - have been designated as potential Projects of National Interest for fast-track approval purposes under Bill C-5. Another $2 billion in federal support has been provided as well. The province’s abandonment of its GHG emission targets has been interpreted as a response to the signals coming from Ottawa around its own climate commitments.

The Ford government has nearly 4 years left in the mandate it won in February. Its next ‘red tape’ cutting moves are far from clear. The accumulating effects of the province’s actions around the impacts of climate change, drinking water safety, industrial pollution, land-use planning, along with rising electricity rates flowing from its nuclear-focused electricity plans, may yet translate into significant political costs that compel a change in direction. But by then, for some, it may be too late.

Carefully buried on the Friday of Halloween, and overshadowed by the build-up for the Toronto Blue Jays World Series games over that weekend, was an announcement by the Ontario Energy Board that the electricity generation costs charged to consumers would increase by 29 per cent on November 1^st.

Sensitive to the politics of electricity rates, the issue on which Premier Doug Ford’s government won its first mandate in 2018, the rate announcement was accompanied by a near doubling, from 13.1% to 23.5%, of the Ontario Electricity Rebate program for consumers provided by the province. The move seems designed to hide the cost increase from consumers, by increasing the subsidization of electricity rates through general revenues.

The additional annual cost of the subsidy increase has been estimated in the range of $2 billion, bringing the total expenditures to approximately $8.5 billion/yr. These are tax revenues that otherwise could be spent on core public services, like education and health care. The total costs of the province’s electricity subsidies are now the equivalent of nearly two-thirds of the province’s $13.5 deficit, exceed its total expenditures on the justice sector, and are almost double its capital expenditures on health care and education for the coming year.

Beyond their immediate costs, the province’s electricity subsidies have perverse effect of providing the largest payouts to the biggest consumers of electricity - typically higher income households. A more targeted strategy could deliver relief to the lower-income and rural households least able to pay additional energy costs, at much lower costs to the provincial treasury.

The increase in electricity costs is largely attributed to increased nuclear generation costs, along with unexpectedly higher spending on energy conservation. Latter may be explained by the greater uptake of provincial programs following the expiry of federal funding for home energy efficiency renovations under the Canada Greener Homes program.

The increase in nuclear generation costs represents a much more serious problem for Ontario taxpayers and electricity ratepayers in the future. The province has embarked on a massive nuclear expansion and refurbishment program, with the intention of increasing the portion of nuclear generation in Ontario from fifty to seventy per cent of electricity output.

In addition to the refurbishment of existing reactors at the Bruce, Darlington and, potentially the Pickering B sites, the province is proposing a 10,000MW new build nuclear project near Wesleyville, Ontario, between Coburg and Kingston, a new 4800MW facility at the Bruce Nuclear site. Finally, there is a four 300MW reactor project at Darlington, for which construction of the first unit is under way. Independent estimates of the costs of this program, based on past results, and recent experiences and assessments in the United States, Europe and the United Kingdom, are in the range of $400 billion.

The federal and Ontario governments’ recent announcement of $3 billion in additional, taxpayer-funded supports for the small reactor project at Darlington facility represents only a small portion of the anticipated $21-26 billion costs of that overall project. Given the lack of any other investors, it remains far from clear how, other than through electricity ratepayers, the province and Ontario Power Generation propose to cover its remaining costs. The same questions apply to the other projects that are to make up the planned nuclear expansion program.

The Darlington reactor project itself carries with it a host of problems that make it an exceptionally high-risk undertaking. The current cost projections ($21-26 billion for four 300MW capacity reactors) are approximately double those of the last new build reactor proposal in Ontario ($22-26 billion for two 1200MW capacity reactors in 2009). That project was promptly abandoned by the previous Liberal government in the face of such estimates.

The Darlington project is based on a reactor design that has never actually been built or operated before anywhere in the world. The project has never been subject to a meaningful environmental assessment, and its construction was approved on the basis of an incomplete design. Serious questions over its technical and economic viability continue. The project is intended to be the leading example of the Small Modular Reactor concept. Other utilities, governments and private investors around the world, have already walked away from the concept as too costly and risky.

More broadly, it is important to recognize that Ontario’s electricity system, and the choices made around are governed by political directives. There is no review and oversight process around the cost and economic, environmental, climate, technological and safety risks, that may flow from those directives.

Ontario is in the unique situation of having been the subject of more efforts to develop and model alternative pathways for its electricity system, and the broader decarbonization of its energy system, than any other province in Canada. But there is no process to assess whether the directions set by the provincial government represent the best options for the province in economic and environmental terms relative to the alternative pathways that have been identified.

The focus of the province’s plans instead is on large centralized, high-cost, high-risk, and high-impact options like new nuclear power plants, and carbon-intensive gas-fired generation. The output and emissions from the province’s gas-fired plants have quadrupled since 2017, and the province is looking to add new gas-fired capacity to the system.

In contrast, independent studies, and even work done by the province’s Independent Electricity System Operator itself, point in other directions. They have emphasized energy efficiency and productivity, renewable energy resources coupled with new energy storage technologies, and distributed energy resources (e.g. networks of household and facility scale rooftop solar and energy storage assets), as offering cheaper, lower risk and more flexible and adaptive pathways to decarbonization and energy sustainability in an environment of high economic and geopolitical uncertainty.

With the basic costs for renewables, particularly wind and solar, falling to well below cad10 cents per kwh, these are the directions in which other jurisdictions around the world, with the exception of Mr. Trump’s United States, are accelerating. In contrast, electricity costs for new build nuclear facilities remain in at least the mid-to high cad20 cents per kwh range, with some estimates exceeding cad40 cents per kwh.

In addition to their impacts on energy affordability, the higher electricity costs flowing from the province’s nuclear-centric strategy will also undermine efforts at decarbonization through the electrification of space heating, industrial processes and transportation. Higher electricity prices will make electrification pathways more expensive, and therefore less attractive relative to existing fossil fuel-based processes.

In economic terms, the Ford government’s nuclear-heavy strategy appears to be premised on an assumption that a massive nuclear expansion program will turn Ontario into an electricity production and export ‘superpower.’

The fundamental problem with that strategy is that Ontario has no comparative advantage in electricity production. Comparative advantage in energy tends to be a product of accidents of geography. Ontario did have such an advantage through the first half of the 20th century, where hydro-electricity, principally from Niagara Falls, provided the foundation of the industrial base that was built through the ‘golden horseshoe’ around the western end of Lake Ontario, from Niagara to Oshawa.

But that advantage was lost from the early 1960s onwards when the province ceased to be a hydro-dominated system, turning first to the construction of coal-fired plants, and then a massive nuclear construction program from the 1960s to the 1990s, ending in the effective bankruptcy of Ontario Hydro.

Ontario turned out to be no better at building and operating these types of plants than anyone else in North America. The province therefore lost its comparative advantage in electricity production. The recent experience with attempts at constructing new nuclear facilities in the US and Europe suggest that such advantage cannot be restored through a nuclear expansion program. Renewable energy sources, combined with energy storage offer much more cost-effective, lower-impact, and lower-risk options. When it comes to energy, any economic strategy for Ontario has to focus on controlling energy costs and improving energy efficiency and productivity, not energy production

So far, Ontario Premier Doug Ford has shown no interest in these options. Ontario needs to a serious debate about the future of its energy systems, finding to pathways to meet future electricity needs while decarbonizing the province without risking bankrupting it in the process. The Ford government seems more inclined to use taxpayers’ own money to hide the consequences of its energy choices instead. Ontario electricity ratepayers and taxpayers should be very worried about where that pathway will lead.

Mark Winfield is a Professor of Environmental and Urban Change at York University. He has written extensively on energy, climate and electricity issues in Ontario. He is co-editor of Sustainable Energy Transitions in Canada (UBC Press 2023).

Carefully buried on the Friday afternoon of Halloween, and overshadowed by the build-up for the Toronto Blue Jays World Series games over the weekend, was an announcement by the Ontario Energy Board that the electricity generation costs charged to consumers would increase by 29 per cent as of November 1^st.

Sensitive to the politics of electricity rates, the issue on which Premier Doug Ford’s government won its first mandate in 2018, the rate announcement was accompanied by a near doubling of the Ontario Electricity Rebate program for consumers provided by the province. The move seems designed to hide the cost increase from consumers, by increasing the subsidization of electricity rates through general revenues, already running in excess of $6 billion/yr. These are tax revenues that otherwise could be spent on core public services, like education and health care.

The cost increase is largely attributed to increased nuclear generation costs, along with unexpectedly higher spending on energy conservation. Latter may be explained by the greater uptake of provincial programs following the expiry of federal funding for home energy efficiency renovations under the Canada Greener Homes program.

The increase in nuclear generation costs represents a much more serious problem for Ontario taxpayers and electricity ratepayers in the future. The province has embarked on a nuclear expansion and refurbishment program, with the intention of increasing the portion of nuclear generation in Ontario from fifty to seventy per cent of electricity output. Independent estimates of the costs of this program, based on past results, and recent experiences and assessments in the United States, Europe and the United Kingdom, is in the range of $400 billion.

The federal and Ontario governments’ announcement of $3 billion in additional, taxpayer-funded supports for the construction of a small reactor project at the Darlington nuclear facility represents only a small portion of the anticipated $21-26 billion costs of the overall project. Given the lack of any other investors, it remains far from clear how the province and Ontario Power Generation propose to cover its remaining costs. The same questions apply to the other projects that are to make up Ontario’s planned nuclear expansion program.

The Darlington reactor project itself carries with it a host of problems that make it an exceptionally high-risk undertaking. The current cost projections ($21-26 billion for four 300MW capacity reactors) are approximately double those of the last new build reactor proposal in Ontario ($22-26 billion for two 1200MW capacity reactors in 2009). That project was promptly abandoned by the previous Liberal government in the face of such estimates.

The Darlington project is based on a reactor design that has never actually been built or operated before anywhere in the world. The project has never been subject to a meaningful environmental assessment, and its construction was approved on the basis of an incomplete design. Serious questions over its technical and economic viability continue. The project is intended to be the leading example of the Small Modular Reactor concept. Other utilities, governments and private investors around the world, are already walking away from the concept as too costly and risky.

More broadly, it is important to recognize that Ontario’s electricity system, and the choices made around are governed by political directives. There is no meaningful review and oversight process around the cost and economic, environmental, climate, technological and safety risks, that may flow from those directives.

Ontario is in the unique situation of having been the subject of more efforts to develop and model alternative pathways for its electricity system, and the broader decarbonization of its energy system, than any other province in Canada. But there is no process to assess whether the directions set by the provincial government represent the best options for the province in economic and environmental terms relative to the alternative pathways that have been identified.

The focus of the province’s plans is on large centralized, high-cost, high-risk, and high-impact options like new nuclear power plants, and carbon-intensive gas-fired generation – whose output and emissions have quadrupled since 2017.

In contrast, independent studies, and even work done by the province’s Independent Electricity System Operator itself, have pointed in other directions. They have emphasized energy efficiency and productivity, renewable energy resources coupled with new energy storage technologies, and distributed energy resources (e.g. networks of household and facility-scale rooftop solar and energy storage assets), as offering cheaper, lower risk and more flexible and adaptive pathways to decarbonization and energy sustainability in an environment of high economic and geopolitical uncertainty. These are the directions in which other jurisdictions around the world, with the exception of Mr. Tump’s America, are accelerating.

So far, Ontario Premier Doug Ford has shown no interest in these options. His government’s Halloween surprise cost announcements should make Ontario electricity ratepayers and taxpayers very worried about what may be yet to come.

In Ontario, the government of Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s strategy for addressing the crisis of housing affordability was to effectively rely on the market (i.e. private developers) to determine and meet housing needs.

That strategy is now facing a colossal market and policy failure. The most obvious evidence of these failures is a massive overbuild of high-rise condominium units, largely aimed as ‘investors’ rather than people actually looking for places to live. It is estimated that there are now over 20,000 units in the GTA with no buyers, and of limited utility as housing due to their small size – all amounting to a potential write-off of more than $10 billion.

Beyond the financial losses, there has been substantial collateral damage associated with the province’s housing strategy. In urban areas these have been defined by the loss of existing affordable rental housing, displaced by now half-empty condo towers, and hyper- intensive development patterns with little or no new supportive infrastructure of all types.

The defining feature of new high-rise development projects in midtown Toronto, for example, are the ubiquitous signs from Toronto District and the Toronto Catholic School Boards indicating that, with no new schools planned or under development, there will be no room in local schools for new residents’ children.

Outside of the urban GTA, protections for natural heritage, endangered species, and waterways and flood control have all been weakened in the name of facilitating housing development.

Despite these failures, the Ford government seems determined to double down on its developer-focused approach to housing. In thinking about what other, more effective paths forward around housing and development might look like, there are some key points we may want to keep in mind.

A return to a frenzied housing market is not a desirable outcome.

Despite the wishes of some in the real estate and development sectors, a recreation of the frenzy of speculation that came to define the region’s housing market over the past decade would not help address the region’s housing needs. That environment produced a cycle of near hyperinflation in the housing sector, while doing nothing to address housing affordability.

Key factor conditions in the GTA housing market have been fundamentally altered.

A long period of low interest rates, dating back to the financial crisis of 2008, in combination high population growth, principally driven by historically high immigration rates, were the key drivers of the rapid increases in housing prices in the region.

That period is now over. Higher Interests rates, adopted in response to post-pandemic inflation, and federal and provincial limits on non-resident buyers, have largely driven speculative ‘investors’ out of the market. At the same time, Canada’s immigration policies are being substantially revised in the post-pandemic period.

There are now projections of population stabilization or even negative growth rather than continuing rapid expansion. The situation will required substantial revisions to the projections of population growth underpinning the province’s actions. The province had already been criticized as greatly exaggerating actual housing needs to justify its aggressive policies and of being insensitive to the needs of specific types of household, particularly at the lower end of the income scale.

In the result, the GTA housing market is now in what can be rightly called a correction, with housing prices falling, particularly in the middle and upper segments of the market.

Truly affordable housing remains a major challenge.

Despite these developments, major gaps in meeting housing needs remain, particularly around low-income, and especially rental, housing. The protections for existing affordable rental housing remain weak. The conversion of rental housing into financial assets by large pools of private capital (a.k.a. financialization) as been associated with patterns of dramatic rent increases to displace existing tenants, and outright replacements of affordable rental housing by new developments.

Private capital is unlikely to respond to the needs of this market segment given the narrow margins, and complexities of building and operating rental housing relative to condominiums. Substantial governmental interventions will be needed, both to protect existing affordable rental housing, and to support non-market housing development by cooperatives and non-profit housing providers.

Failed policies continue to have legacy impacts.

Much of what the Ford government in Ontario did under the guise of providing housing was actually unrelated to meeting housing needs. Land supply, for example, a major focus of the province’s actions, was never identified as a significant barrier to providing housing. That point was recognized by the province’s own developer-friendly housing task force, given the amounts of land already designed for urban development in the region.

The implication of that conclusion is that province’s actions around the GTHA Greenbelt, Conservation Authorities, natural heritage conservation, endangered species, wetlands, waterways, floodplains and hazard lands never really had anything to do with housing supply. Rather they responded to long-standing development industry complaints about barriers to the development of lands that were rightly off-limits. These policies have created major problems of their own in terms of managing impacts of changing climate, the conservation of biological diversity, and the integrity of waterways and drinking water source waters. They need to be revised to address these problems.

In urban areas, the province’s ‘no rules/no planning’ approach to development, particularly in relation to areas it has designated as ‘transit oriented communities or ‘major transit station areas‘ has created perverse legacies of its own. The province’s approach has encouraged hyper-tall (e.g. 60+ story) zoning demands from landowners for densely packed, overwhelmingly residential buildings, that are now unlikely to ever be built in light of a fundamentally altered market environment.

These behaviours are continuing on the part of developers, seeking approvals for high rise projects under rules that no longer make sense in terms of housing needs or the market. The result continues to drive land values upwards, making more appropriately scaled and designed developments challenging propositions.

The province’s development rules in urban areas need to be re-aligned with reality of the market. They also need to address the litany of problems associated with the super-intensive development they encouraged, particularly in terms infrastructure shortfalls of types, and the creation of functional and livable urban spaces.

The GTA’s housing market has been fundamentally altered from where it stood a few years ago. Planning policies and rules need to catch up with that reality of we are, to provide the basis for the development of affordable and sustainable communities in the region.

The author is a Professor of Environmental and Urban Change, and was involved in the development of the GTA Growth and Greenbelt Plans.

Published in the Hamilton Spectator, September 10, 2025

The Ford government’s lack of transparency around the potential costs of the proposed 413 Highway through the GTA greenbelt is drawing growing criticism. The 413 would run from Highway 400, just south of King City, to the convergence of Highways 401, 407 and 403 north of Oakville.

Whatever the costs of the 413 might ultimately turn out to be, it is important to recall that the project only represents the tip of what is now a more than half-trillion dollar fiscal iceberg of nuclear (estimated in the hundreds of billions, highway ($30 billion plus $50-100 billion for burying the 401 highway) and transit ($61 billion) projects now being pursued by the province.

There is no question that the province needs to make investments in energy and transportation infrastructures. But whether the specific projects the province is focused on make economic, technological, environmental and planning sense, and whether the resulting projects are being well managed, is another set of questions altogether.

None of the projects in the province’s growing portfolio of infrastructure megaprojects has been subject to any meaningful form of public assessment or review. That situation has been reinforced by the Ford government’s ‘streamlining’ of the province’s environmental assessment process to the point of meaninglessness. Many of the key projects, like the 413 Highway, 404-400 Highway Bradford By-Pass and the Pickering B nuclear plant refurbishment, have been previously assessed as unnecessary and uneconomic.

On transit, there has never been a serious explanation of how the long-planned Pape to Queen station downtown relief subway line in Toronto, morphed into the $20+ billion Ontario Line megaproject running from the now discarded Science Centre to the long-closed and partially demolished Ontario Place. Instead, the provincial transit agency has been granted authority to effectively approve its own projects, under direction from the province.

With respect to energy, serious questions have to be asked about the province’s program of nuclear construction and refurbishment projects. These now carry an estimated potential price tag in the range of $400 billion (Wesleyville new nuclear $200+ billion; Bruce C new nuclear ~$100 billion; Darlington SMRs ~$25 billion; Darlington, Bruce and Pickering B refurbishments $50+ billion – based on recent actual costs and external estimates) Do these projects represent the least costly, safest and most efficient way of decarbonizing the province’s energy systems, while meeting future energy needs? Ontario residents have no way of knowing, as the province’s energy plans are no longer subject to any form of external review, assessment or approval.

The question of how these megaprojects are being managed also has to be considered. The delays and cost overruns on provincial transit projects, like the Eglinton and Mississauga LRT projects, and the risks of similar outcomes with the much larger Ontario line project, have drawn attention to the near-complete lack of meaningful oversight and transparency around Metrolinx’s activities. The province’s handling of the refurbishment of Ontario Place, and construction of a private spa on part of the site, is raising similar questions about a lack of adequate oversight, review and assessment.

Finally, there is the question of how this portfolio of projects is to actually be paid for. This has been an area of ambiguity, if not mystery. The long-term implications of whatever financing arrangements are being made for the province’s overall fiscal position need to be fully understood and evaluated carefully. We are no longer in an age when governments can effectively borrow at near-zero interest rates.

Consideration also has to be given to the government’s emphasis on committing fiscal capacity to very-long-term, but unevaluated, infrastructure megaprojects in a period of high economic and political uncertainty. The choices being made are particularly important when the province is widely seen to be chronically underspending in areas with long-term implications for the province’s long-term well-being of their own, like education (at all levels) and health care.

Provincial investments in infrastructures are essential. At the same time, the public needs to be sure that these investments, particularly in areas like energy or transportation, make sense in economic, environmental, and social terms. Are we certain that they represent the least full-cost ways of meeting future transportation and energy needs, leaving greater resources available to respond to other pressing societal needs? Will these projects reduce greenhouse gas emissions and other environmental impacts, or make them worse?

The province’s current, non-transparent approach to decision-making and management of infrastructure megaprojects makes answering these kinds of questions virtually impossible. It also begs questions about whether the province is laying the groundwork for a herd of white elephants, whose costs and impacts may haunt Ontario residents for decades, if not centuries, to come.

The contradiction is inescapable. Summer wildfires, intensified by the impacts of climate change, are again raging from BC to Ontario. At the same time, the federal government has introduced legislation - Bill C-5 – The One Canadian Economy Act - widely seen to be intended to facilitate the development of additional fossil fuel extraction and export infrastructures in Canada.

The legislation flows from last week’s first ministers' meeting and has been presented as a central element of Canada’s response to the challenges posed by the Trump administration in the US. The bill actually consists of two parts: The Free Trade and Labour Mobility in Canada Act, intended to remove internal barriers to trade; and the Building Canada Act to facilitate the approval of “nation-building’ projects.

The Free Trade and Labour Mobility in Canada Act

The free trade and labour mobility act element mirrors the approach to removing internal barriers being taken by many provinces. This model has focused on the mutual recognition of standards and requirements, meaning that if a product is approved for use in one province, then other provinces will automatically consider it as complying with any applicable standards in their jurisdiction. The same basic model is being followed for trades and professions in the interests of labour mobility.

Bill C-5 would extend this model to the federal jurisdiction. Any good produced, used or distributed in accordance with a provincial or territorial requirement would be considered to meet any comparable federal requirements (Part 1, s.8 (1)). Similar provisions would be made regarding services (s.9) and occupational qualifications (s.10).

On the surface, this is an appealing way of removing interprovincial trade barriers based on differing requirements and standards between provinces and territories. But it carries a number of significant risks. Simple mutual recognition of standards potentially sets up a lowest common denominator framework for the affected standards.

Products, services, or qualifications meeting the requirements of any province are deemed to meet those of all provinces and, via Bill C-5, those of the federal government as well. Within such a mutual recognition framework, a producer or service provider complying with the lowest standard among all of the jurisdictions concerned can demand access to the markets of all jurisdictions participating in the systems.

The problems don’t stop there. In many cases, the primary way in which standards for goods, services, or occupations have been strengthened is by individual, usually subnational, governments (e.g., provinces, states, and cities) moving to higher standards on their own initiative.

Among the strongest examples often cited in this context, has been the US state of California. Over the past half-century, the state has regularly taken the lead on adopting higher standards in areas like energy efficiency and environmental protection. Other states, provinces, and even the Canadian and US federal governments have eventually followed in what has come to be known as the ‘California effect.’

That model of policy innovation would be undermined by a simple mutual recognition framework. Low efficiency light bulbs permitted, for example, in one province would have to be permitted in all, even if other provinces, territories, or even municipalities want to adopt a higher standard to improve energy efficiency and productivity and address climate change. Trying to move these types of standards forward by agreement among multiple jurisdictions can take decades, and typically still leads to a lowest common denominator outcome.

Other multijurisdictional governance structures within which there is mutual recognition of standards among members, most notably the European Union, have extensive institutional and political structures intended to prevent the lowest common denominator problem. They seek to push standards harmonization upwards rather than downward. Such safeguards are so far lacking in Canada’s case.

The Building Canada Act

The second element of Bill C-5 is the Building Canada Act. The legislation is intended to accelerate approvals for projects that are classified by the federal cabinet as being in the “national interest.” Once a project is designated, a range of federal approvals would be “deemed to be in favour of permitting the project to be carried out.” (Part II, s.6(1). The specific approvals references in the legislation include those that might be made under the Impact Assessment Act, Indian Act, and a range of other environmental, water, energy, and transportation-related legislation and regulations (Schedule 2).

In the place of these approvals, a single designated minister under the act would issue a single “document” providing the necessary federal authorization, and outlining any federal conditions, on a project (s.7(1)).

The bill would establish criteria for “national interest projects” projects, including references to the interests of Indigenous Peoples and climate change (s.6). However, these criteria are ultimately discretionary. The cabinet can designate any project it wishes as being in the “national interest.”

The approach being taken through Bill C-5 is already subject to widespread criticism as paralleling the approach of Ontario’s widely criticized Bill 5. Both pieces of legislation are seen to grant enormous discretionary powers to cabinets and designated ministers in ways that are seen to challenge basic principles of the rule of law.

Questions are being raised about the extent to which the legislation undermines requirements for meaningful and substantive consultation with affected Indigenous communities.

The risks of short-circuiting reviews of projects that may embed major economic, environmental, technological, and safety risks have been highlighted as well. Nor can the well-documented potential for ‘accelerated’ processes to intensify the social, political, and legal conflicts over projects, delaying their approval even further, be overlooked.

Is this the best we can do?

Beyond these immediate questions, Bill C-5 raises a range of larger questions around the economic strategies underlying Canadian governments’ responses to the Trump challenge. The legislation highlights the two key themes that seem to be emerging so far – the liberalization of internal trade and an emphasis on new infrastructures for primary resource commodity exports for markets (in theory) other than the US, notably oil sands bitumen, liquified natural gas, and ‘critical’ minerals.

There are ongoing debates about the potential economic gains associated with the removal of interprovincial trade barriers. Some analyses suggest that the likely gains have been greatly exaggerated. Given the often highly technical nature of the barriers involved, much more detailed analyses are required to understand their nature and impact. In the meantime, a simple mutual recognition model runs risks of a lowest common denominator approach to health, safety, labour, environmental, and professional standards, and of potentially blocking policy innovation at the subnational level in these areas.

The risks associated with a primary resource commodity export-based economic model, and the importance of escaping such staples 'traps,' have been central themes in Canadian economic and political history. Canada's Indigenous peoples have borne much of the costs of resource extraction. Their responses to Canadian governments' doubling down on resource extraction and export pathways are informed by long-standing patterns of historical injustice.

In that context, the lack of attention to non-commodity export-based sectors and services, is striking. The long-term success for these types of value-added economic activities will require much finer-grained sectoral strategies than have been seen so far.

The narrow focus on large physical infrastructure megaprojects shows a similar lack of imagination. Nation-building projects could be in fields like health promotion and care or public services. They could be programs of activities distributed across the country, seeking to improve energy productivity and efficiency, and distributed energy systems.

The federal government's failure, so far, to seize the opportunity to attract the brightest minds in the world presented by Trump’s moves to exclude international students from US universities is already remarkable in this context.

The Trump administration is upending longstanding trade and security relationships for Canada. That shift in Canada's relationship with the US is likely structural and long-term. Our responses need to be considered in the same light. The race to the bottom and resource megaproject focus reflected in Bills 5 (Ontario) and C-5 does not meet that test in economic or environmental terms. Better strategies for sustainability, prosperity, reconciliation, and security in a changing world are needed.

The first four months of US President Donald Trump’s second administration have stretched the boundaries of disbelief among even his harshest pre-election critics. He is seen as seeking to fundamentally alter the American democratic legal and constitutional order.

Those trying to define Trump’s approach to governance have described it as a form of ‘electoral dictatorship.’ Under this model, those who have won an electoral mandate assume that they are entitled to exercise absolute power for the duration of that mandate.

In the case of President Trump, this behaviour has taken many forms. At its core has been a governance model grounded in the issuance and attempted implementation of Executive Orders widely thought to reach far beyond any authority granted the President by the US Constitution or Congress. Initiatives putatively enabled by these measures have included the tariff-based trade wars initiated against much of the rest of the world (including Canada), the activities of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the dismantling of environmental and climate protections, and the arrest and deportation of alleged illegal immigrants.

Behind this, there has been a wider disregard for any boundaries on executive authority, or any ethical or legal norms in relation to what authority a President may have. Last week, for example, Mr. Trump indicated his intention to accept a luxuriously appointed 747, apparently to be the new Air Force One, from the Qatari government. Acceptance of such a gift is widely seen to be expressly forbidden by the Foreign Emoluments Clause (Art 1, Section 9, Clause 8) of the US Constitution.

Beyond this there have been aggressive attacks on the authority and independence of the courts, and growing fears about the use of the US Department of Justice to pursue critics. The mainstream non-conservative media have become a target as well, given their willingness to fact-check and challenge the narratives constructed by the administration. Universities have also drawn the administration’s attention, not just around DEI policies and programs, but core teaching and research activities to which the administration objects.

There have been strong suggestions that the Trump administration’s approach to governance has been heavily influenced by the models of the likes of Hungary’s Viktor Orban, and Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Both regimes have been labelled as reflecting a model of ‘authoritarian populism.’

All of which brings us to Doug Ford’s Ontario. Ford’s approach to governance was initially labelled a form of ‘market populism,’ emphasizing the interests of ‘the people’ vs elites, the need to cut ‘red tape’ and ‘get it done.’ Concerns that the Ford government’s style seemed to reflect an understanding of its mandate as an ‘electoral dictatorship’ emerged early. At one point, Ford asserted that he had “final sign-off on everything in this province.”

In office, the Ford government had already been noted for its disregard for limits on executive authority; the systemic elimination of requirements for public consultation, transparency, accountability in decision-making in the name of eliminating ‘red tape;’ decision-making models that seem more based on access and connections than evidence or democratic processes; the increasingly assertive use of state power to favour private interests, particularly in areas like urban development, energy and resource extraction; and the pursuit of increasingly costly and questionable infrastructure projects with little or no meaningful public review.

These behavours have accelerated dramatically following the February 2025 provincial election, under a banner of ‘Protect Ontario.’ Consistent with its previous style, the government has taken an assertive interpretation of its electoral mandate, although, as in 2022, its legislative majority actually flows from the votes of less than 20% of eligible voters in the province (43% of popular vote with 45.4% voter turnout).

The pursuit of infrastructure projects with costs running into the $10s and even $100s of billions with thin to near non-existent rationales was reinforced by last week’s provincial budget. Prominent examples have included proposals to bury the 401 Highway in Toronto, and new nuclear power plants at Darlington, Bruce and Wesleyville.

Consistent with a disregard for boundaries on executive authority, the legitimacy of judicial reviews of government decisions has been challenged in a manner seen as reminiscent of Trump’s responses to similar reviews. The government’s response to the granting of an injunction against the government’s attempt to remove bike lanes in Toronto has been a notable example.

But perhaps the best illustration of the province’s post-election assertiveness is Bill 5 – the Protect Ontario by Unleashing our Economy Act. The most notable feature of the Bill is provisions that would allow for the creation of ‘special economic zones’ anywhere in the province. Within these zones, economic activities could be excluded, by the provincial cabinet, from any applicable provincial or municipal legislation, regulations, by-laws or rules (e.g. environment, public health, safety, labour, human rights, planning, and building codes) or in relation to '“trusted” proponents.

The bill would also effectively repeal the province’s Endangered Species Act. The already fragile regulatory regime for mining would be further weakened as well.

Although notionally aimed at the ‘ring of fire’ mineral deposit in Northern Ontario, “special economic zones” could be designated anywhere in the province, including densely populated urban areas. It has been noted that these kinds of zones are a common feature of authoritarian regimes, like China's, or jurisdictions in deep economic distress.

The legislation has prompted vociferous reactions from the province’s Indigenous leaders. For others, the response has been one of near despair, asking “is this what the Ontario government has come to?” in mirroring Mr. Trump’s authoritarian governance style in the name of resisting the US President.

The fate of Bill 5 is an unknown at this point. The same can be said of the question of whether it signals a full move in the direction of an ‘authoritarian populist’ mode of governance. The fact that the question is on the table at all in a province whose political culture had been defined by moderation and civility is a surprising enough.

As an economic strategy, the bill, with its implicit message that there is no limit to how low the province might go in terms of health, safety and environmental standards to attract investment, can be seen as an admission of intellectual bankruptcy. It is the product of a government that has no real idea of how to deal with the challenges posed by Trump a rapidly changing world.

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May 17, 2025

Incoming Prime Minister Mark Carney’s meeting was US President Trump last week was widely regarded as a success. Mr. Carney avoided a ‘Zelinski’ moment in the Oval Office, and was seen to have successfully fended off the US President’s 51^st state rhetoric – for now.

But the disruptions that Mr. Trump has brought to Canada’s economic, environmental, trade and security relations have raised major questions about Canada’s future pathway with the US and the rest of the world.

In reflecting on these questions, three potential directions seem to have emerged.

The first would be to seek to deepen Canada’s economic and security integration with the US. The arguments for deeper economic and security integration with the US, sometimes presented as a ‘grand bargain’ option, would accelerate the pathway Canada has followed in a North American context since the signing of the original Canada-US Free Trade Agreement in 1988. At its root, this option seems based on the notion that deeper integration will create a situation where the US can’t harm Canada without harming itself in at least equal measure.

The problem with this approach is that Canada is already deeply integrated with the US in economic and security terms through trade agreements like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and Canada-US-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA), and the North American Air Defence (NORAD) and NATO alliances.

The consequences of disrupting these relationships seem to have had no discernible deterrent effect on the behaviour of the Trump administration so far. It is unclear why deeper integration would produce better results. At the same time, Canada would be intensifying its economic and security dependency on an increasingly unstable and unreliable partner, and one which many see to be an irretrievable pathway to deepening economic, social, intellectual, political, and environmental decline. Some might even see the notion of deeper integration as a de facto surrender to Mr. Trump’s 51^st state ambitions.

A second potential pathway might be to focus on our relationships with other nations and communities seeking to maintain some degree of a rules-based trade, security, and environmental international order, and looking to bypass an increasingly unstable United States. The European Union is an obvious potential leader of such a pathway, and there have been semi-serious suggestions that Canada should join the Union. Shared values around democratic governance, the rule of law, human rights, and the need to address biospheric threats like climate change could, provide the basis for a grouping among the other non-US members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, and like-minded nations.

China could be the other major potential participant in such a partnership. It has a strong interest in a stable international trade regime and has shown a willingness to engage around the climate challenge. At the same time, China’s expansionist ambitions and record of political interference represent serious political and security threats to Canada and other countries.

Although the Canada-Europe Trade Agreement (CETA) provides the foundation for a relationship with EU, it is also clear that the EU, and many other nations, tend to see Canada’s international economic role primarily as a geopolitically stable and secure provider of resource commodity exports, like ‘critical’ minerals in place of Russia. That implies a serious risk of Canada being pushed in the direction of a double-down on the resource ‘staples’ export dependency trap that Canadian governments have sought to escape since before Confederation.

There would be other problems as well. Global markets for commodities like critical minerals are uncertain and in deep flux. As a relatively high-cost fossil fuel producer, Canada is unlikely to be among the last standing in a decarbonizing world.

A third option that has begun to draw attention would be for Canada, in the short term, to seek to stabilize its trade relationship with US on a sectoral basis. Vehicle manufacturing and parts are an obvious potential starting point in these terms, potentially leading to an effective return to the pre-Canada-US Free Trade Auto Pact model of sectorally managed trade.

Such an approach would have to be matched with a net-zero economic strategy for Canada. Such a strategy needs to transform Canada's industries from producers of low-value raw materials into producers of higher-value products and services for a world that must decarbonize and advance sustainability. Efforts to expand rules-based trade, security, and environmental relationships with the EU, the rest of the Americas - beginning with Mexico - and other like-minded countries would need to be intensified as well.

In the end, such an approach needs to build systems that pay attention not just to the interests of international capital, but to those of people and the planet. A failure to do so will continue to feed the backlash against the social, economic, and environmental consequences of unfettered global marketization that has led to the emergence of populist authoritarians like Donald Trump.

In light of the unexpected focus on the federal Impact Assessment process in the federal leaders, debates this week, I am recirculating an article I wrote with colleagues at UVic and UCalgary a few years ago on Bill C-69 - the Impact Assessment Act, which might provide some useful background and groundtruthing for this discussion.

Best

Mark Winfield

https://theconversation.com/cooling-the-rhetoric-on-canadas-environmental-assessment-efforts-113539

Cooling the rhetoric on Canada’s environmental assessment efforts - The Conversation

I am also sending a link to an article last week on these themes as well.

https://theconversation.com/canadas-federal-election-doesnt-seem-like-its-about-climate-change-but-it-actually-is-254458