TORONTO — Ontario’s environment minister hopes to burn more garbage for energy and build more landfills as the province runs out of space to dump its trash and is framing it as a way to fight U.S. President Donald Trump’s recent tariff on Canadian trash.
The province’s landfills will be full within 10 years and the province needs to act quickly, Environment Minister Todd McCarthy said.
On Tuesday, the province tabled an omnibus bill, Building Ontario Faster Act, that seeks to speed up the permitting and approval regime across all ministries, including for new landfill sites or incinerators.
“We want to have proponents come forward if they have proposals for either a landfill or an energy-from-waste site and then we have willing municipalities that would be willing, able and supportive of being a host community,” McCarthy said Wednesday.
He said communities can say no to a landfill or garbage incinerator.
“Municipalities will hold the pen on whether or not they want a landfill site, but there are benefits, obviously, economic benefits, to having a landfill site, an expansion to a landfill, or an energy from waste site in a community,” he said.
Trump signed an executive order last week that lifted some tariffs, but added a 50 per cent tariff on Canadian trash, with the measures set to go into force in a few days.
McCarthy said that decision could mean Ontario’s landfills will be full within five years, but he did not say how many landfills or incinerators the province needs.
He is hoping to work with municipalities to build landfills or incineration centres for energy, but the province may have to force cities to host the sites.
Ont. ‘should embrace’ energy from waste: McCarthy
A 2024 report from the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy said Canada shipped more than three million tonnes of garbage to the state in 2024.
“Energy from waste is something we can and should embrace,” McCarthy said. “Europe, Great Britain have embraced it because they don’t have landfill capacity. We do, but we do need to improve our landfill capacity because in 10 years we won’t have it. We haven’t built a new landfill site in Ontario for 20 years.”
He said the incinerators produce clean energy, which Green Party Leader Mike Schreiner took issue with.
“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.”
McCarthy pointed to two waste-to-energy incinerators in the province as success stories: Emerald Energy from Waste in Brampton, Ont., and the Durham-York Energy Centre in Clarington, Ont., in the minister’s riding of Durham.
Schreiner said one major stumbling block to building landfills and incinerators is that many residents oppose them in their neighbourhoods.
“People do not want toxic air pollution in their backyard,” he said. “They instead want a government that’s not going to dismantle our blue box program and are actually going to look at ways in which we can reduce the amount of garbage actually going into landfill instead of accelerating and increasing the amount going into landfills.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 28, 2026.
Liam Casey, The Canadian Press
