In early October 2023, a senior bureaucrat in the Ontario Energy Ministry emailed an Enbridge official with a “sort of urgent” request.
Newly released internal documents show that Premier Doug Ford had called the natural gas giant that month to discuss delays in obtaining a natural gas connection for a facility whose name is redacted in the documents. The issue was so important, Ford made the call on a weekend. The following day, per the emails, the premier was set to meet with the president and CEO of Enbridge and the executive vice-president of Enbridge Gas in Etobicoke, Ont., where Ford resides.
“I really need to know what this is and what the status is and what the next steps are,” the government official said in their email to Enbridge Gas.
The communication is just the latest example of the close relationship between Ford’s government and Enbridge, at a time when the government is setting out its long-term energy plans. Those plans include expanding natural gas infrastructure and codifying Ontario’s dependency on the fossil fuel, which is largely made up of methane, a greenhouse gas that causes global heating.
It’s part of a 3,532-page document package containing hundreds of government briefings and emails from 2021 to 2023. They reveal provincial officials acted as liaisons between Enbridge and the public, with one bureaucrat in contact with the company on a daily basis. They also show elected officials, including Ford himself, in talks with the company’s top leadership.
The documents were obtained via freedom of information legislation and shared with The Narwhal by an energy expert. Enbridge Gas, the Ministry of Energy and the premier’s office did not respond to The Narwhal’s request for comment.
“Natural gas is fundamental as an insurance policy to keep the lights on,” Energy Minister Stephen Lecce told reporters when he announced the province’s new long-term energy plan on June 12. Without natural gas, he said, Ontarians will experience “liability issues, blackouts and higher energy costs.”
Time and again, the Ford government has come out in support of projects proposed by Enbridge Gas, the $50-billion Calgary-based private company with a near-monopoly on gas distribution in Ontario. Most notably, the government overturned a decision by an independent regulator that would have forced Enbridge to stop passing down the costs of new gas hookups to Ontarians — all to protect the company’s bottom line, according to internal documents The Narwhal reported on last year.
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Enbridge and natural gas already run deep in Ontario. The fossil fuel is the primary source of heating for three-quarters of homes in the province. But the onset of the climate emergency — and the need to move away from heat-trapping greenhouse gases such as methane — is absent from the Ford government’s actions or long-term energy plans.
The grid is already dirtier as a result: in 2021, the electricity system was 94 per cent emissions-free, but has now dropped to about 84 per cent, despite the Ford government’s promise of a near-emissions free grid by 2050.
Internal documents illustrate close relationship between Ontario officials and Enbridge Gas
Internal documents in the newly released package show Enbridge Gas regularly emailing officials in the Energy Ministry to inform them of project proposals in different communities. This included battery projects and pipeline expansions, as well as any opposition to either.
These emails show that in 2023, the Energy Ministry told someone wanting a connection that it would put them in touch with a staff member “who talks to Enbridge every day.” This was just one example of the ministry’s involvement in guiding the expansion of natural gas, from offering homeowners suggestions on how to get hookups, to relaying detailed constituent complaints about delays in Enbridge providing natural gas connections. The ministry also relayed residents’ questions about subsidies for switching to heat pumps, a government-funded program Enbridge administers.
In several instances, senior government officials in the Energy Ministry, including the minister’s chief of staff, asked Enbridge staff to show support for proposed energy laws. “Continued support for this legislation is critical to success, it would be great to see Enbridge at committee as well, and a supportive letter to legislators would also be helpful!” a senior official wrote to company representatives in November 2023. In response, the company created one-page documents detailing why it felt that various laws would increase access to reliable power across the province.
“As a responsible gas supplier, Enbridge Gas maintains transparent communication with all levels of government in the regions where we operate,” Enbridge Gas spokesperson Leanne McNaughton told The Narwhal in April 2024. “This helps us ensure that our residential, commercial and industrial customers continue to have access to a resilient energy source of their choice.”
Enbridge staff also took the opportunity in these back-and-forths to offer advice to the government about the future of the province’s grid. In one such note, the company said, “Achieving the goals of a coordinated energy system in Ontario will be difficult, if not impossible, unless Enbridge Gas has an equivalent seat at the system planning table.”
Ontario’s energy plan keeps natural gas in the mix until 2050 — 10 years longer than experts say is necessary
The long-term provincial energy plan released June 12 is a 152-page document titled “Energy for Generations.” It’s a compilation of promises already made to deal with the energy supply crisis ahead: a lot more nuclear (which will take years to get up and running), a lot more energy efficiency programs (to replace those the Progressive Conservative Party scrapped when it came to power) and a lot more natural gas — one of Ontario’s cheapest and last remaining fossil fuel-based sources of energy.
One slightly new aspect of this plan is Ontario’s first official natural gas policy, which codifies what this government has been arguing for many years: that the methane-heavy fossil fuel is “vital” and “critical.”
“There is no alternative,” Energy Minister Lecce said repeatedly as he unveiled the plan, especially in this time of rising demand for power. That demand is spurred by the electrification of transportation and buildings, as well as the push for more power-hungry data centres to facilitate artificial intelligence. The government is also attempting to integrate electricity and heating in its new “coordinated energy planning” approach, and proposes that both be increasingly generated by natural gas.
The Independent Electricity System Operator, the Crown agency in charge of balancing energy supply and demand, has projected natural gas could be phased out by 2040 without causing much disruption. Ontario’s new long-term energy plan deviates from the operator. The government projects the fossil fuel will be used until at least 2050 and then sparingly, as various nuclear facilities in refurbishment come back online. About this two-decade-plus stretch, the plan says, “This will result in a short-term increase in electricity system emissions.”
Ontario directs independent energy board to enable ‘continued rational expansion of the natural gas system’
Part of the government’s new natural gas policy is a directive to the Ontario Energy Board that its decisions weigh “allowing gas utilities an opportunity to earn a fair return on investment, and enabling the continued rational expansion of the natural gas system.”
The Ontario Energy Board is the independent regulator for electricity and natural gas in the province, tasked with approving and denying plans set out by energy companies. Its job is to implement policy set by the provincial government and to keep industry accountable, ensuring decisions are financially responsible and in the public interest.
The province’s new order comes just over a year after the Ford government made the unprecedented move to overturn the energy board ruling that would have forced Enbridge or developers to pay for natural gas hookups in new homes, instead of passing the cost on to homeowners. At the time, the board justified its ruling as being more economical for ratepayers and in line with transition to renewable energy, finding that natural gas could become “a stranded asset,” financially unviable or socially unacceptable as lower emissions energy sources increase and improve.
The internal emails show that in the lead-up to that decision, officials with Enbridge Gas were communicating with bureaucrats about how various board proceedings were delaying the company’s ability to build pipelines and other natural gas infrastructure.
Company officials said over the course of 2023, Enbridge had faced “several outstanding issues” with the board, “including weighing into policy decisions, regulatory approval delays and determining based on their views of climate change if ‘gas is good.’ ”
In the documents, the company stated delays it attributed to the board had increased project costs and forced it to pause construction.
“If the government would like to see these [natural gas expansion] projects proceed, they must work with the [Ontario Energy Board] to create the regulatory certainty needed,” company officials wrote repeatedly to officials in the Energy Ministry and to various MPPs. Enbridge representatives also asked the government how the company could earn back investments as they wait for board decisions.
“These ongoing delays for residential, business and Indigenous communities waiting for access to reliable, affordable natural gas … are unacceptable.”
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This story is available for use by Canadian Press clients through an agreement with The Narwhal. It was originally published in The Narwhal, a non-profit online magazine that publishes in-depth journalism about the natural world in Canada. Sign up for weekly updates at thenarwhal.ca/newsletter.
Fatima Syed, The Narwhal
