Ontario's growing environmental crisis: how two major projects are harming the Great Lakes

Bruce Van Dieten, a member of Ontario Place for All, fondly remembers taking his kids to the iconic waterfront destination, biking as they “traversed the island,” soaking in the majestic views of the Great Lake.

“There were kids everywhere, running around. It was marvelous….I used to walk there all the time, but that was a sad, sad moment when I could no longer,” he said, recalling the jarring overnight tree cutting at Ontario Place in October.

Protestors outside Ontario Place were devastated to witness the lush forest on the island being destroyed in October 2024.

(Anushka Yadav/The Pointer)

The PC government’s hurried plan to replace Ontario Place—a vital sanctuary for 192 bird species, migratory birds, foxes, monarch butterflies, and brook trout—with a $350-million glass megaspa and water park developed by the Austrian company Therme, has left many residents and conservationists heartbroken.

A Monarch butterfly.

(Engage Ontario Place)

Barn swallows are threatened species, protected under the Endangered Species Act. Nests of Barns swallows were found at Ontario Place.

(Engage Ontario Place)

28 birds were observed at Toronto-Trillium Park and Ontario Place this January.

(e-Bird)

One of the protestors, Natasha Lemire-Blair, who had turned up in support of Ontario Place for All on October 3, 2024 had told The Pointer she’d witnessed a “beautiful fox” flee as the trees were being chopped in front of her eyes with a “really heavy heart.”

A fox spotted at Ontario Place in September 2023.

(Ontario Place Fan/Facebook)

“I wondered what that fox was experiencing as its habitat is being destroyed and where it’s going to sleep tonight and thinking about all the other species that are now at risk now that all the trees have come down,” she reflected.

Beyond its value as a haven for land-based wildlife, Ontario Place is home to diverse aquatic habitats. Its open waters, lagoons, and channels serve as critical staging grounds for waterfowl like geese, ducks, and swans. The nearshore waters of Lake Ontario sustain an array of fish species, from brook stickleback to northern pike, throughout their life cycles, while the shoreline provides essential habitats for reptiles such as northern map turtles and snapping turtles.

These ecosystems are part of the vast Lake Ontario, spanning nearly 19,000 square kilometres and connecting to the 244,700-square-kilometre Great Lakes system, a vital freshwater resource shared between Canada and the United States.

Together, the five Great Lakes contain 21 percent of the world’s surface freshwater by volume, and 84 percent of the surface freshwater in North America.

(Visual Capitalist/Alex Varlamov/X)

All five lakes, which flow into the Atlantic Ocean, form a vital waterway that drives the regional economy, supporting over 50 million jobs and contributing $6 trillion to the global Gross Domestic Product (GDP), according to the World Economic Forum.

Yet, the Great Lakes are already grappling with water quality challenges intensified by climate change. Experts warn that further development, like the Therme project, risks accelerating the degradation of this critical freshwater system, undermining both environmental and economic stability.

The health of natural resources south of the border is now in peril as U.S. President Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accord for the second time weakens progress toward environmental sustainability. 

Closer to home, Ontario's natural world struggles to survive the clenches of Premier Doug Ford’s PC government, which has persistently eroded environmental laws and relentlessly advanced its development agenda.

The federal government or the courts haven't exactly aligned with residents or opposed the Ontario government on critical issues either.

Despite appeals from Environmental Defence, scientists, and resident groups urging federal intervention, the Impact Assessment Agency of Canada remains convinced that existing mechanisms—relying on trust in the PC government’s “customized” environmental assessments—are sufficient to address potential harm to at-risk species and watersheds, including in the controversial case of Highway 413.

As for Ontario Place, efforts to halt its redevelopment failed. In June 2024, a panel of judges dismissed Ontario Place For All’s request for a judicial review, siding with the Ford government and clearing the way for the project.

Both projects—Ontario Place and Highway 413—threaten the ecological health of the Great Lakes and surrounding ecosystems.

 

The Lake Ontario Basin is a critical part of the province’s southern ecosystems. A network of watercourses that run down from the Greenbelt make Brampton and Mississauga prone to flooding.

(Michigan Sea Grant)

An Environmental Defence report highlights the severe damage Highway 413 will cause to three critical watersheds—the Humber River, Etobicoke Creek, and Credit River—all of which flow into Lake Ontario. 

These watersheds, already degraded by decades of urbanization, fall far below federal guidelines for forest and wetland coverage, making them even more vulnerable to the highway's impact.

Greenbelt protection was expanded to include 21 key urban river valleys and 7 coastal wetlands throughout the Greater Golden Horseshoe in 2017.

(Greenbelt.ca)

Adding to the devastation, the province’s remaining agricultural corridor, located just below the Greenbelt, is slated to be cleared for the 400-series highway and the sprawling subdivisions developers are eager to construct.

“It would be devastating to the watersheds and remaining natural heritage in the GTA and prime agricultural lands, without really any evidence [it] would actually do anything to alleviate congestion,” Ontario Nature’s conservation policy and campaigns director Tony Morris had told The Pointer in an interview.

Previous investigations by The Pointer have time and again revealed a long list of potential damages, including threats to endangered species, pollution of local waterways, and disruption of wildlife movement in urban watersheds.

One of the most alarming impacts is the potential degradation of rivers, streams, and waterways. Highway 413 is expected to exacerbate already poor water quality in these watersheds, with urban expansion linked to the project significantly increasing aquatic salt concentrations. All three watersheds are currently failing to meet federal water quality standards.

Chloride levels in Etobicoke Creek are projected to rise by 49 percent due to chemicals from the highway and nearby developments, harming aquatic life. Already, salt levels in these streams are high enough to harm aquatic species.

The report warns, “any percent change greater than ten means that the watershed conditions will deteriorate significantly.”

The construction of the highway could more than double the impervious surface in the Etobicoke Creek headwaters, putting at risk eight vulnerable species that live in the area south of the Oak Ridges Moraine, and exacerbate flooding in southern regions, including western Brampton and downtown, where solutions for existing flooding issues have not yet been implemented.

Not only could severing these headwaters from the rest of the watershed lead to a catastrophic failure, but the construction of the highway also poses a significant risk to the health of Lake Ontario. 

A 2016 study identified pollutants and contaminated sediments as two of the 50 stressors affecting the Great Lakes. 

Summary of environmental stressor groups prioritized in the study of the Laurentian Great Lakes.

(STUDY)

The Pointer spoke with Linda Campbell, one of the study's authors and professor at Saint Mary's University in Halifax, who pointed out that one of the greatest risks to the Great Lakes is the critical loss of wetlands, driven by agricultural runoff, “climate change as well as development spreading out.”

In the case of the proposed megaspa at Ontario Place, pollutants and contaminated sediments won’t have to travel through rivers or creeks. Instead, they will flow directly into Lake Ontario, impacting the Great Lakes ecosystem.

Back in 2012, the provincial Liberal government introduced the Great Lakes Protection Act, along with a draft of Ontario's Great Lakes Strategy, to create a framework for the restoration, protection, and conservation of the lakes.

By 2015, the act became law, with provisions to report progress after three years and review the strategy after six. "This timing aligns the Strategy review with the Great Lakes binational program’s timeframes," the act noted.

In 2021, the federal government and Ontario signed a new Canada-Ontario Agreement on Great Lakes Water Quality and Ecosystem Health to combat challenges such as toxic algae blooms, plastic pollution, excess road salt, and the restoration of native species and habitats. It also aimed to improve wastewater management and enhance resilience to climate change.

A 2020 study warns that “invasive species may exacerbate the overall harm resulting from degradation and loss of wetland habitat, and wetlands are further impacted by water level fluctuations and shoreline development.”

Map illustrating Great Lakes areas of concern.

(Ontario.ca)

Since the mid-1990s, harmful algae blooms have been resurging in Lake Erie, Lake Huron, and Lake Ontario, and are now beginning to appear in Lake Superior. 

Lake Erie, the smallest and warmest of the Great Lakes, is particularly affected each summer. 

However, due to warming waters, these blooms are now spreading to other Great Lakes.

A 2024 study by York University highlights that climate change is driving algal blooms in Lake Superior for the first time, as Cyanobacteria thrive in warmer freshwater systems with increased nutrient levels, typical in urbanized and agricultural landscapes.

Climate change is also leading to more frequent and intense storms in the Great Lakes region, causing higher runoff that transports nutrients from the watershed into surrounding water bodies.

Ontario Tech University’s Professor of Biological Science, Andrea Kirkwood, explained that “Lake Ontario is the most stressed” of the Great Lakes. 

Recreational uses and stresses are higher around the coastal regions in Ontario for Great Lakes.

(NOAA)

“While Lake Erie gets more attention for its visible algal blooms, Lake Ontario, receiving water from the upper Great Lakes, is cumulatively experiencing the most stress,” she noted.

Kirkwood says the higher frequency of algal blooms is “impacting our understanding of how food webs are working.”

Despite these multiple stressors, the Ontario government concluded that no changes to the strategy were necessary following a 2018-2023 review. 

Kirkwood finds this decision troubling, noting, "it's absolutely worrying, especially when you consider that nearly a decade has passed” since the last review.

“In the past 10 years alone, we've seen more frequent wildfires, heat waves, and polar vortex events—extreme weather is on the rise. We need to update our data to better manage these changes. It's crucial for the government to invest in better monitoring of water quality and ecosystem health.”

In the meantime, local politicians, Ontario Place for All members, and landscape architect Walter Kehm—who resigned from the project in 2023 over environmental concerns—are sounding the alarm over the province’s sewage plan for Ontario Place.

“Infrastructure Ontario is working on an accelerated timeline to dump sewage into a channel of water by the lakeshore to facilitate a megaspa development. Spending public dollars to push sewage into different parts of the lake is an outrage,” the group claims in a post on social media.

Van Dieten told The Pointer that Toronto's outdated sewer system, particularly the Combined Sewer Outlets (CSOs), causes overflows during rain, releasing untreated sewage into the lake and leading to Red Flag beach warnings.

Due to time constraints with Therme’s development, the province has opted for a “temporary fix” of a “turbidity curtain” to the CSO which will help maintain water clarity but won’t eliminate harmful bacteria like E. coli, he explained.

“There will still be days and perhaps many days during the summer when people can't swim because of the E. coli content of the water.”

One of the biggest concerns for him is the “lack of support received from the Liberals,” despite their federal responsibility to protect the Great Lakes and Lake Ontario under the Canadian Navigable Waters Act, a legislation, part of a broader set of environmental protections, that’s intended to safeguard public waters and strengthen navigability protections.

In November 2019, the Green Party of Ontario proposed protecting Ontario Place from privatization by creating a provincial park for the site and its surrounding areas, a resolution passed at its annual convention.

“Lake Ontario and Toronto’s waterfront should be preserved for the benefit of everyone, not just those who can afford it. We have an opportunity to create a protected area for all Ontarians to enjoy, while at the same time supporting biodiversity and climate action,” Green Party leader Mike Schreiner said in a statement.

Van Dieten described the "public consultations" for Ontario Place as "rigged," stating, "What we were really asked was, ‘What colour deck chairs do you want?’ It was never about what we would like to see on the property."

“Our Great Lakes are an unparalleled resource that should be managed in the public trust. We ought to be safeguarding our waterfront for everyone’s benefit rather than cordoning off huge sections for private profit,” Schreiner emphasized.

Kirkwood warns that the combined effects of Highway 413’s construction and the Ontario Place redevelopment, along with ongoing urban sprawl, present a serious risk to the health of the Great Lakes. 

“We're really taking a big chance, a big risk, by continuing to exert a lot of stress pressure on the Great Lakes, while we know that climate change is already having a big impact on the health of the Great Lakes.”

(Anushka Yadav/The Pointer)

She emphasized the importance of protecting natural resources, noting that millions rely on the Great Lakes for drinking water. "If people don't really care about nature for nature's sake, they should care about the free services we get."

Referencing New York City's approach to water source protection, where the City invested billions to safeguard its watershed, recognizing that protecting the source is more cost-effective than treating contaminated water. 

"In Ontario, we definitely don't have that perspective. It's very much more about building and using the housing crisis as an excuse to just have unfettered development completely," she said.

However, this may be more of an issue with the provincial government, as smaller municipalities like the Town of Pelham are doing their part to move towards this approach. Pelham, home to the world’s largest protected greenspace, recently conducted a study revealing that nature provides over $585 million in stormwater management services.

"I just don't understand why the government is still pushing for new developments in green spaces when there’s plenty of ‘white land’ available for development for the next 50 years. The issue is that this land within urban boundaries is more expensive due to its higher value. It all seems to come down to maximizing the profits of developers," Kirkwood said.

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