Doug Ford

Manitoba, which has the highest per capita COVID-19 infection rate in Canada, has announced it’s tightening the rules for social gatherings and shopping.

Ontario may not meet its greenhouse gas emission targets because they're not a "cross-government priority," the province's auditor general said on Wednesday, November 18, 2020, casting doubt on a key environmental pledge made by Premier Doug Ford.

Ontario’s auditor general released four reports on the state of the environment in the province Wednesday, finding that the Ford government is failing to follow the rules. While opposition parties slammed the Progressive Conservatives, Environment Minister Jeff Yurek said he was “proud” of his ministry’s work.

Ontario is allowing resource extraction in protected areas, failing to collect enough data to even know if it’s meeting its environmental responsibilities and not abiding by the rules, the province’s auditor general found in a series of scathing reports.

Dianne Saxe was the Ontario environmental commissioner from 2015 until 2019, when the Ford government eliminated her position. On Friday, Canada's National Observer reported that Saxe would run for the Greens in 2022.

Environmental advocates say the change will push endangered species in Ontario closer to extinction. The Ontario government says other layers of protection are enough, and the move would help create jobs.

Conservation authorities oversee Ontario watersheds. The changes to how they work could allow developers to circumvent checks and balances brought in after hurricane Hazel in 1954, which destroyed houses built on flood-plains.

Ontario's Progressive Conservative government delivered a budget focused more on COVID-19 than the deep cuts it served up in 2019. But clean energy and green infrastructure were nowhere in sight, with recovery plans centred on tax cuts.

The province’s spending plan for the next three years has a focus on getting young people into the trades as Progressive Conservatives unveil their plan to “protect, support, recover” from the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Is global warming Earth worship?” asked a course advertisement for Canada Christian College. The Ford government attempted to expand the evangelical school’s ability to grant degrees last month.

The Ford government has fast-tracked a development project in Pickering, Ont., that would destroy a sensitive wetland. “This has been my life's work, environmental protection," said Linda Pim, who resigned Wednesday. "I just decided I had to take a stand."

Environment and Climate Change Minister Jonathan Wilkinson’s comments come as the Parliamentary Budget Office releases its latest estimates on the federal carbon tax.

The federal and Ontario governments promised Thursday to chip in $295 million each to support the mass production of electric vehicles and the batteries that power them.

"The rules are complex and they haven't been communicated as clearly as needed,” said Prof. Steven Hoffman of York University. "And some of them just don't make sense."

“Our efforts to engage with Ontario have not worked, and the current approach to forestry in Ontario is resulting in the death of the boreal forest by a thousand cuts,” said Brunswick House First Nation Chief Cheryl St. Denis.