Ontario wants to burn more garbage and build more landfills as tariff pressure mounts

Ontario's environment minister, Todd McCarthy, says the province is running out of space to dump trash and wants to burn more garbage for energy and build more landfills. He tied the push to a U.S. tariff on Canadian waste. McCarthy said the province's landfills could be full within 10 years, and within five years if the tariff stays in place.

The plan sits in the Building Ontario Faster Act, an omnibus bill tabled Tuesday to speed permitting and approvals across all ministries, including new landfill sites or incinerators. The bill would repeal a section of the Environmental Assessment Act that requires municipal support for landfill sites. It must still pass.

"Municipalities will hold the pen on whether or not they want a landfill site," McCarthy said Wednesday, adding that communities could say no. But a day earlier he had left the door open to imposing landfills on communities if none volunteered. "Energy from waste is something we can and should embrace," he said.

Green Party Leader Mike Schreiner rejected the case for incineration. "I think the minister needs to go talk to the scientists who show, one, that incineration leads to toxic air emissions, and two, the ash from incinerations is quite toxic as well and still has to go to landfill," Schreiner said. He said resident opposition in neighbourhoods is the main obstacle to landfills and incinerators.

McCarthy pointed to the Emerald Energy from Waste plant in Brampton and the Durham-York Energy Centre in Clarington as success stories. The Durham-York centre is in his own riding.

The province moved last year to force the reopening of a landfill in Dresden, Ont., a community that did not want it, through Bill 5, the earlier omnibus bill that exempted the site from full environmental assessment.