Ontario to miss emissions reduction goal by an even wider gap than it admits: auditor
Written by The Canadian Press on October 1, 2025
TORONTO — Ontario’s environment ministry says it will miss its 2030 greenhouse gas emissions reduction target, but the auditor general says today the province will in fact likely miss that target by an even wider margin.
Auditor general Shelley Spence says in a report that the government has projected that it will miss its 2030 target of reducing emissions by 3.5 megatonnes.
But even in the projection that it would fail to reduce annual emissions to about 141 megatonnes by that year, the auditor says Ontario has overestimated reductions to be achieved from government initiatives in every sector.
Spence says the projection includes federal policies that have ended, including the consumer carbon tax and electric vehicle subsidies.
She says the government’s projection assumes the province is on track to meet its targets for reducing and diverting organic waste from landfills but the province has made “little to no progress” on that.
Spence also writes that the government’s projection estimates that emissions will decrease slightly from the agricultural sector but there aren’t any mandatory initiatives in place to actually reverse rising emissions.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 1, 2025.
Allison Jones, The Canadian Press