Ontario’s environment minister is feeling the heat after writing to his federal counterpart asking Ottawa to repeal a slew of climate laws, only a few months after briefing documents showed his government was set to miss its own emissions targets.
A joint letter from Alberta Minister of Environment and Protected Areas Rebecca Schulz and Ontario’s Todd McCarthy asked the federal government to withdraw a series of existing laws to boost the economy.
The pair asked the federal Environment Minister Julie Dabrusin to consider scrapping the Impact Assessment Act, clean electricity regulations and the legislation behind the carbon tax.
The letter also asked her to change the Species At Risk Act, which gives the federal government the power to intervene when certain habitats are in danger.
Those laws, Alberta and Ontario wrote, “undermine competitiveness” and don’t serve an environmental purpose.
“Canada is poised to be an economic superpower, but achieving that potential depends on strong, constitutionally grounded provincial authority over resource development and environmental management,” Schulz and McCarthy wrote.
Ontario Green Party Leader Mike Schreiner said, if the feds accepted the recommendation, the province would be left without meaningful climate protection.
“If you remove all the federal regulations and you combine that with the fact that the Ford government is ploughing ahead with these special economic zones, it means basically the Ford government is proposing that we create a province without any environmental protections,” he said.
The letter comes just a couple of months after civil servants warned McCarthy Ontario was on course to miss its emissions targets.
A briefing slide prepared for the incoming environment minister in March charted how Ontario had slipped away from its emissions targets and, according to modelling early this year, will now miss them by around three megatonnes.
The latest figures were calculated in January 2025 and obtained by Global News using freedom of information laws.
A slide prepared to brief Todd McCarthy in March, 2025.
Global News
Schreiner said the letter was evidence the province had no intention of correcting course.
“Ontario already isn’t going to meet its pollution reduction targets, and this letter confirms that the Ford government doesn’t even want to attempt or pretend like it’s going to meet our pollution reduction targets,” he said.
McCarthy’s office did not answer questions asking about the effects of repealing the laws or whether reducing emissions was a primary objective of the ministry.
“The intention of the letter was to make clear the urgent need for the federal government to ensure a regulatory environment that supports economic growth,” a spokesperson said.
The same letter to the federal government also urged Ottawa not to reintroduce legislation governing safe drinking water, specifically Bill C-61.
The legislation was introduced in the last Parliament and sought to ensure First Nations have access to clean drinking water and can protect fresh water sources on their territories.
The bill faced a lengthy committee process but was not passed into law before Parliament was prorogued earlier this year, and Dabrusin said last week that her government plans to reintroduce it.
Several First Nations in Ontario have called for McCarthy to resign over the request.
Ontario NDP Leader Marit Stiles said she couldn’t understand the Ford government’s logic for making the ask in the first place.
“Why is the Ford government standing in the way of getting clean drinking water to First Nations? First Nations in Ontario have been under boil water advisories for decades,” she said in a statement.
“In fact, Ontario has the highest number of drinking water advisories in Canada. Clean drinking water is a right, not a luxury.”
The government said it “supported the right to clean drinking water” and that the letter did not represent an “either-or proposition.”
— with files from The Canadian Press