Ontario’s environment minister insists he can balance economic pressures from Canada’s trade war with the United States and his mandate to reduce emissions, as the auditor general shows the province’s goal is slipping away.
A new report from Auditor General Shelley Spence, released Wednesday, said the province, which already anticipates it will not meet its emissions target, could miss it by “an even wider margin” because of recent policy changes.
The AG said the province had likely overestimated its greenhouse gas emissions reductions in several sectors, including transportation and waste.
Environment Minister Todd McCarthy said economic uncertainty caused by U.S. tariffs had made it harder for Ontario to meet its targets, which he won’t commit to beyond 2030.
“We are continuing to meet our commitment to at least try to meet our commitment for the 2030 target,” he told reporters. “But targets are not outcomes. We believe in achievable outcomes, not unrealistic objectives.”
Modelling completed by the government in January found Ontario would miss its 2030 emissions reduction targets by 3.5 megatonnes.
Those calculations, the auditor general found, did not take into account the end of the federal carbon tax or changing electric vehicle mandates, according to the report.
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“In addition, the projection does not reflect provincial decisions to permanently cut provincial fuel taxes and to remove road tolls on certain highways, which could encourage more gas-powered vehicle use and therefore increase GHG emissions,” the auditor general wrote.
The report suggested the government may also have estimated the reduction in emissions from industry, buildings, agriculture and electricity.
Its emissions estimates for the waste sector may also be off, the auditor general said, because the province has not kept up with plans to improve how landfills are managed.
“We found that the Province has made little to no progress meeting its targets or implementing its 2017 commitment to ban organics from landfills,” the auditor general wrote.
To meet the target now, the province would have to do the equivalent of taking half of all fossil-fuelled passenger vehicles off Ontario’s roads in five years, Spence found.
While McCarthy’s ministry accepted the recommendation to include those factors in its modelling, it rejected the majority of suggestions from the auditor general, including more public reporting.
“We did actually do a report in 2019 on the state of the environment and, at that time, a lot of our recommendations were rejected,” the auditor general explained to reporters.
“It is more common in this kind of report.”
McCarthy framed the province’s emissions targets as a potential trade-off against affordability and economic development.
“We cannot put families’ financial, household budgets at risk by going off in a direction that’s not achievable,” he said. “There are many who put forward targets that are not achievable and they’re failing.”
Ontario Green Party Leader Mike Schreiner said the government had its priorities wrong.
“The premier is not on track to meet his own watered-down climate pollution targets and his government has stopped bothering to even update the public,” he wrote in a statement.
“Why? Because Ford is prioritizing protecting the profits of fossil fuel giants over protecting people from the escalating costs of the climate crisis.”
Among the suggestions the Ford government rejected was public, proactive reporting of emissions targets.
“We will continue to report — not only annually through the National Inventory report — but in our own accountability to our elected house on our progress in balancing, meeting targets with actual results and by protecting the economy,” McCarthy said.
The report also found Ontario does not have emissions targets beyond 2030 and suggested adding them.
The government rejected the idea.
— with a file from The Canadian Press
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