‘Ottawa’s deprioritization of climate being heard loud and clear at Queen's Park’: Ontario abandons emissions targets
At a time when news cycles have fixated on chatter about Justin Trudeau and Katy Perry, debates over why Prince Harry turned up in a Los Angeles Dodgers cap and the daily insanity seeping out from the Trump White House, drawing widespread attention to climate change feels nearly impossible.
But Bill Gates might have done just that.
In an October 28 memo titled, “Three tough truths about climate,” the tech billionaire penned what he wants “everyone at COP30 to know”:
Truth #1: “Climate change is a serious problem, but it will not be the end of civilization.”
Truth #2: “Temperature is not the best way to measure our progress on climate.”
Truth #3: “Health and prosperity are the best defence against climate change.”
A philanthropist and businessman, Gates’ truths are shaped by his experiences, which make him believe that even though “climate change will have serious consequences—particularly for people in the poorest countries—it will not lead to humanity’s demise.”
Acknowledging that the world has made “great progress” on climate action and must continue backing breakthroughs to reach net-zero emissions, he says the world should prioritize tackling poverty and disease over reducing short-term emissions.
Words, like art, are open to interpretation. Science isn’t.
Climate researchers identified ten major hazards linked to rising greenhouse gases, which disrupt the balance between incoming solar energy and outgoing infrared radiation, driving global warming. Higher temperatures increase the air’s capacity to hold moisture, accelerating soil evaporation and contributing to drought, heatwaves, and the heightened risk of wildfires. In wetter regions, faster moisture replenishment intensifies precipitation and flooding, while warmer oceans fuel stronger storms and storm surges worsened by sea level rise. Ocean warming and carbon dioxide absorption also trigger chemical shifts like acidification and declining oxygen that together constitute ocean climate change. Changes in natural land cover, through deforestation and altered albedo or evapotranspiration, both emit greenhouse gases and reshape conditions for disease transmission, reinforcing the interconnected nature of climate hazards.
(Nature)
Climate change is driving disease and poverty.
A 2022 study found that more than half (58 percent) of infectious diseases have been aggravated by climatic hazards.
As rising temperatures reshape ecosystems, mosquitoes, ticks, bacteria, fungi, and even livestock-borne pathogens are expanding into new regions, driving up malaria in high-elevation Africa, spreading dengue and Zika virus into North America and Europe, pushing Lyme disease northward, worsening cholera and Vibrio outbreaks after floods and heatwaves, and accelerating food-borne and fungal infections.
Climate-driven health impacts also erode already-fragile incomes, capable of pushing more than 44 million people into poverty in high-impact scenarios.
World Bank modelling shows that climate impacts could push 32 million to 132 million more people into extreme poverty by 2030 as rising food prices, falling agricultural productivity, intensifying natural disasters, and health issues deepen global poverty.
The World Bank highlights that climate-driven health impacts including child stunting, malaria and diarrhea are the biggest poverty trap of all, pushing 25 million people into extreme poverty even under milder climate conditions.
(World Bank)
Poor households already spend a large share of their income on food, so climate-induced spikes in food prices hit them disproportionately. In regions like Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, it continues to be the single biggest driver of future poverty increases.
Extreme weather events like floods, storms, and droughts destroy crops, livelihoods, and homes while reduced labour productivity from heat exposure directly cuts earnings for outdoor workers.
Climate change, poverty and disease cannot be understood or financed in a vacuum. Investing in climate change is investing in vulnerable communities.
When Gates says, “climate change will not end civilization,” it is his belief, not a truth.
In September, Prime Minister Mark Carney said his government’s Climate Competitiveness Strategy “will focus on results rather than [emissions reduction] targets, on investments rather than bans.”
Words like Gates’ and Carney’s matter. They trickle down like wax on a candle through the lower levels of government, solidifying into lopsided policymaking.
On November 4, when Ottawa released the 2025 budget, it made no mention of emissions reduction targets.
The Progressive Conservatives here in Ontario took notice.
On November 6, as Ontario’s finance minister Peter Bethlenfalvy unveiled the 2025 Fall Economic Statement, he announced the PC government will repeal sections 3-5 of the 2018 Cap and Trade Cancellation Act, which requires the province to set emissions reduction targets, develop a climate change plan and report on progress toward those goals.
“Earlier this week, the federal government dropped their targets,” Bethlenfalvy claimed during a press conference at Queen’s Park.
He was either shockingly misinformed, or lying.
When pressed by reporters about when exactly Carney eliminated the country’s targets, he appeared a bit nervous. The prime minister had actually said his government is “focused on results” rather than solely on specific “targets”.
The Government of Ontario has increased the funding for the Ministry of Environment, Conservation and Parks. The figure above are in millions (000,000).
(Government of Ontario)
Despite the PCs’ increasing funding for the Ministry of the Environment, Conservation and Parks to a little more than $1 billion for 2025-26, from $862 million the previous budget year, this decision to drop the sustainability act by the province has left environmental advocates and experts bewildered (the one-time increase to the ministry’s budget could reflect work required to unwind some of its most critical initiatives). They contend that without a clear climate plan, the increased funding is largely symbolic, especially when considering the rapid decay of legislation protecting the environment under 6.5 years of the Doug Ford government.
“It’s certainly the wrong direction,” Ontario Nature’s Campaign and Policy Director Tony Morris told The Pointer.
“As soon as you stop tracking and trying to achieve a particular goal or target, there's not really any incentive to actually carry out any work…it's almost like Ontario's decided to give up.”
The fiscal plan’s only nod to climate adaptation comes through the province’s Sustainable Bond Framework, where only two percent of Green Bond funding has gone toward climate resilience.
On August 28, Ontario issued a $1-billion Green Bond, its nineteenth overall and fifth under the Sustainable Bond Framework, directing the funds to four projects: GO Transit Expansion, the Hazel McCallion Line, the Ontario Line subway, and the Scarborough Subway Extension.
(A Plan to Protect Ontario/Government of Ontario)
Ontario’s Ministry of Energy and Mines, on the other hand, has been allocated over $8 billion, along with legislation like Bill 5 pushed forward to make opening new mining operations easier.
York University’s environmental studies associate professor Mark Winfield calls the Ford government’s fiscal approach a “disaster”.
Winfield, who has previously served as an advisor to the Environmental Commissioner of Ontario and the federal Commissioner for Environment and Development, says the only climate plan the Ford government ever put forth was back in 2018, and “basically nothing has been done to implement it,” and that this further backtracking is only going to make matters worse.
Climate activist and organizer Karishma Porwal told The Pointer she feels the Ontario government has “abandoned” the future of young Ontarians like her.
“You can only manage what you measure. Without measuring progress (or lack thereof), how are we supposed to know where we're at in our fight against climate change? Without a goalpost, we cannot hold our elected officials accountable,” Porwal said.
“Our taxpayer dollars pay their salaries, making them accountable to us, but we have no metric by which to see if they're actually doing their job. It's like your performance review at work, but without any targets.”
Porwal compares targets to recipes for baking a cake: they give communities something concrete to rally around, “a goal” to visualize and check off.
“Solving climate change feels like a daunting, mountain of a task. But following a step-by-step plan to meet a greenhouse gas reduction target? That's easier,” she explained.
In March, the PC government’s own internal projections showed it would miss the 2030 target of reducing emissions by 3.5 megatonnes.
On October 1, Ontario’s Auditor General Shelley Spence warned in a report not only is the province not going to meet its targets, but it will likely miss it by an even wider margin than previously assumed.
Spence made four recommendations including asking the environment ministry to establish post-2030 GHG-reduction goals, consult the public on and publish an updated climate plan, regularly review and revise that plan as initiatives evolve, report annually on Ontario’s progress in cutting emissions and require yearly updates from every body responsible for provincial or federal initiatives to ensure the accuracy of all policy assumptions in future projections.
"Reducing greenhouse gas emissions is important for the future of our province," the auditor general said at a news conference after the release of the report.
"The cost of not reducing emissions far outweighs the cost of reduction. We're already seeing the effects of climate change and the millions of dollars it is costing."
The latest mini-budget goes against all of those recommendations.
"We have consensus in our government when it comes to protecting the environment, being strong stewards of the environment, but we have a consensus around balance as well," Ontario Minister of the Environment, Conservation and Parks, Todd McCarthy, said.
"We can't put people's jobs at risk. We cannot put families' financial, household budgets at risk by going off in a direction based on some target that's not achievable."
A working paper written by Harvard University’s economics assistant professor Adrien Bilal and Northwestern University’s economics assistant professor Diego R. Känzig estimates economic damage from climate change is now estimated to be six times worse than previously thought, with a 1 degree Celsius rise in global temperatures reducing world gross domestic product (GDP) by 12 percent.
The study calculates the social cost of carbon at $1,056 per ton, which is far higher than the U.S. estimate of $190, warning that a 3 degrees Celsius rise by the end of the century could slash global wealth by more than 50 percent, comparable to the economic toll of a permanent war.
Winfield worries about the rate Ontario is “recarbonizing intensively.”
Emissions in the province, which had steadily fallen since the province phased out coal-fired electricity, are on the rise.
Between 2005 and 2018, total emissions dropped by 22 percent. That trend reversed between 2020 and 2022, as the province rebounded from pandemic-related economic slowdowns and electricity sector emissions in particular surged, driven by increased reliance on natural gas plants to meet higher demand. By 2022, emissions were up 5.7 percent from 2020, returning to levels not seen since 2017.
He criticizes the Ford government’s push for highway expansion in the GTA, combined with its rollback of municipal green building standards through Bill 17 and repealing Toronto’s green roof bylaw and undermining tools for energy-efficient construction — all as deeply counterproductive, weakening efforts to reduce emissions and improve building performance, and also not allowing municipalities to lower their emissions, at a time when emissions are bouncing back.
Emissions in the Greater Toronto Hamilton Area rose for the fourth consecutive year, with buildings and transportation continuing to be the biggest sources of emissions, leaving the region behind its 11 percent annual emissions reduction needed to reach the 2030 target. Electricity emissions also rose sharply by 28 percent due to greater use of gas-fired generation as the province shifts to nuclear. Despite the slowdown, the progress came from retrofits and green standards that made buildings more efficient, an increase in EV registrations and transit ridership. “Municipal climate action is gaining ground, but recent provincial and federal policy and funding rollbacks risk eroding hard-won progress,” The Atmospheric Fund chief executive officer Julia Langer said, warning leaders aren’t getting the message —"Climate action is economic action. Every retrofit, every EV, every clean energy investment creates jobs, drives innovation, lowers energy bills, and builds resilience.”
(The Atmospheric Fund)
“You've got a provincial government that more or less is pretty much saying we don't care,” Winfield said.
“It's also important not to forget the role the federal government around this…The signals from Ottawa of the deprioritization of climate are being heard loud and clear at Queen's Park.”
“Ottawa has become an enabler”: Whether it is Carney referring the Darlington Nuclear Project to the Major Projects Office or the “unnecessary, destructive” projects like Highway 413 not being assigned for a federal impact assessment.
“At times, the federal government is going out of its way to get out of the way of what Doug wants,” Winfield believes.
On November 3, when Bill 56, the Building a More Competitive Economy Act, received royal assent, the Ford government effectively centralized control over Ontario’s drinking water protections by giving itself greater authority over the wording and implementation of water protection rules, reducing the flexibility of local committees that have long overseen region-specific plans.
The government framed the changes as a way to streamline processes and support housing and infrastructure development, but critics have cautioned the move risks weakening safeguards established after the 2000 Walkerton tragedy, which left seven dead and thousands ill.
“The risk of Ottawa doing anything to constrain or lean on Ontario to do better just seems to be gone,” Winfield said, explaining why the Ford government could chuck emissions targets and the climate plan aside conveniently.
“The larger structural fiscal problem is that we're spending huge amounts of money on grandiose infrastructure projects, while basic maintenance and operation of core infrastructures, schools, hospitals, post-secondary institutions, [and] social services are more and more starved for resources.”
Going by the science that climate change is expected to increase the spread of diseases, Ontarians will be among the most vulnerable, given that the healthcare system is already under pressure.
The province’s fall economic statement revealed a $400 million increase in healthcare spending for 2025-26, a mere 0.4 percent rise, bringing total spending to $91.5 billion.
Sounds like a large figure? It isn’t — Ontario still spends the least per person on hospitals in Canada and ranks second-lowest in overall health sector funding per capita.
Public hospitals in Ontario have paid $9.2 billion over the past decade to for-profit agencies for services, a 2024 Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) study noted. During the same period, the real per capita cost of private services jumped by 98 percent, while funding for hospital staff employed directly by the public system grew by only six percent.
“We're now into a space where what was projection and forecast and modelling has now moved into lived reality,” he told The Pointer.
This year has been the second-worst wildfire season for Canada and Ontario on record, exacerbated by one of the worst droughts the country has experienced.
In May alone, northwestern Ontario saw major declines in rainfall, contributing to worsening drought conditions across large portions of the country and preparing fuel for wildfires.
By the end of May, 55 percent of Canada was experiencing conditions ranging from abnormally dry to severe drought, according to the Canadian Drought Monitor.
(Government of Canada)
Ontario’s Ministry of Natural Resources reported that nearly 6,000 square kilometres burned in the province this season, far more than last year and well above the province’s ten-year average.
In its recent mini-budget, the PC government allocated $225 million for emergency forest firefighting, but offered no details on how it plans to address long-standing staffing and operational challenges.
Over the past decade, Ontario has seen a dramatic decline in wildland firefighters, down by more than 100. There is a 40 percent turnover rate in aviation and emergency services, leaving the province heavily dependent on inexperienced workers in high-risk roles, a National Union of Public and General Employees (NUPGE) statement highlighted.
Nearly a third of Ontario’s fire aviation fleet is grounded due to a shortage of pilots and aircraft maintenance engineers. Frontline wildland firefighter positions are 14 percent unfilled, and Ontario is short 27 percent of its fire ranger crews.
This year, Southern Ontario wildfires were aided by heavy rainfall that restored some moisture but also caused localized flooding, and while it was manageable, the July 2024 floods in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) have taught Ontarians that one can never underestimate the damage caused by extreme rainfall events. July 2024 was the wettest summer on record for the region, and over $940 million in insured damages.
The province is now investing $99.3 million to support evacuation services for First Nation communities affected by the spring flooding and wildland fires, and has set aside a total of $165.5 million for Emergency Preparedness and Response without a breakdown of how this funding will be divided.
The Pointer reached out to the province seeking a clarification of this breakdown, but did not receive a response by the time of publication.
Whether this short-term funding will be effective remains to be seen, but what continues is the PC government’s encroachment into ecologically protected areas.
When Morris was reading Bill 68, Plan to Protect Ontario Act (Budget Measures), 2025 (No. 2), he found it “very strange” to see two amendments in particular: one that accelerates the consolidation of conservation authorities from 36 to seven, weakening frontline agencies responsible for flood protection, and the second with Bill 26, Provincial Parks and Conservation Reserves Amendment Act that would allow the government to reclassify ecologically sensitive provincial parks and create new park classes by regulation without public consultation, raising fears that the Ford government is paving the way for transferring parts of Wasaga Beach to municipal control for tourism development.
On November 17, multiple environment advocates and experts spoke at a Standing Committee of the Interior offering amendments to Bill 26, which proposes to add two new classes of provincial parks, including urban and adventure class parks.
“We support the concept [of adventure class parks] so long as 'maintenance of ecological integrity ' remains the first priority,” Ontario Nature’s executive director Andrés Jiménez Monge said.
“Ecological integrity is the sheer anchor, and recreational uses should complement, not risk that purpose.”
Jiménez Monge requested the committee to include language ensuring that no existing provincial parks are reclassified as adventure parks, noting that current classifications were assigned through Indigenous engagement and local input, and changing them could undermine ecological protections, break earlier commitments, and create uncertainty for communities and Indigenous partners.
He also warned against allowing motorized recreation such as snowmobiles and ATVs, as a core feature of adventure class parks. In many landscapes, these activities are incompatible with ecological integrity and with national protected area standards. Where motorized recreation is appropriate, it should continue to be managed through existing tools like regional land-use planning and designated trail systems, not expanded into sensitive areas, he explained.
He emphasized that provincial parks and conservation reserves must remain places for low-impact recreation, and that ecological and recreational needs can be balanced when management decisions stay with Ontario Parks staff supported by monitoring and enforcement.
Jiménez Monge requested the removal of a clause allowing the creation of “such other classes of parks as may be prescribed by regulation,” warning it grants overly broad power to add new park categories without legislative oversight.
Currently, less than 11 percent of Ontario’s lands and waters are formally protected, and the province has yet to adopt the national and international “30x30” target, which aims to conserve 30 percent of lands and waters by 2030. Canada committed to the goal in 2022 as a signatory to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, but Ontario is widely regarded as a “laggard” in the national effort to safeguard its natural heritage, Wilderness Committee’s Ontario campaigner Katie Krelove reminded government officials during her presentation.
The latest State of Ontario’s Biodiversity report underscores the urgency of the situation: more than half of the strategy’s conservation targets (54 percent) have made little progress, 38 percent have seen some progress, none have achieved substantial results, and no targets have been fully met.
In 2025, Ontario’s biodiversity progress remains uneven: most targets show limited advancement, and while restoration and monitoring efforts are underway, stronger action and broader-scale initiatives are needed to meet the 2030 goals. The report also found that 88 percent of Ontarians support investments in biodiversity protection and restoration.
(State of Ontario’s Biodiversity/Sobr)
An October Abacus Data poll found that 91 percent of Canadians agree that nature is one of their country's most valuable assets, and 90 percent agree it's a powerful resource for building a sustainable economy.
In 2023, the World Economic Forum warned that 50 percent of the global economy is under threat from biodiversity loss.
The five transitions in the Nature-positive connecting infrastructure system recommended by the World Economic Forum could create over $3 trillion of annual business opportunities and 117 million jobs by 2030.
Only by fundamentally transforming human systems through five key transitions including compact and nature-positive built environments, planet-compatible urban utilities, integrating nature as infrastructure, and nature-positive connecting infrastructure, can the world shift from destructive activity to a nature-positive economy, avert irreversible biodiversity loss that threatens over $44 trillion in global economic value, and create millions of new jobs while safeguarding ecosystems.
What Ontario has been doing instead is living by a “formula for fiscal disaster”, Winfield said.
Massive, poorly managed infrastructure projects, “the Eglinton LRT being the poster child”, are driving costs higher, while a projected $400 billion in nuclear capital expenditures adds further strain.
Electricity subsidies have also ballooned to roughly $8 billion annually, or two-thirds of the province’s $13.5 billion deficit for 2025-26, exceeding spending on the justice portfolio and capital investments in hospitals and schools.
Winfield warns that this combination of overspending on risky projects and covering basic household costs “risks pushing the province into serious long-term fiscal trouble.”
“That's how you end up in the hands of the IMF (International Monetary Fund), and that's pretty much what we're doing,” he said, noting Ontario is diverting more and more of the budget to high day-to-day costs, especially around electricity, and engaging in these massive unevaluated infrastructure investments which have huge downstream fiscal implications.
Winfield says the fiscal statement should be “ringing alarm bells” for Ontarians who wish for both an environmentally and economically sustainable future.
“Our well-being as humans is dependent on the functioning and healthy natural world. We need it for clean air, clean water, food, protection from floods, even our mental health,” Morris said.
“We need to get away from this idea that it's one or the other, economy or environment, and that we need to have an honest conversation that looks at economic solutions that operate in harmony with nature, not in conflict…it's important that people remember that democracy doesn't end at the ballot box.”
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