A few months ago, Ontario reporter Fatima Syed mentioned she’d been looking into “kind of complicated agreements” that the vast majority of municipalities in the province have signed with Enbridge Gas.
These contracts are technical, sure, but they’re also important: they allow the natural gas company to access public land to install pipelines, free of charge.
It’s not like that everywhere. Many Canadian provinces, including British Columbia and Alberta, permit municipalities to levy fees for this access, which can bring in tens of millions in annual revenue.
Ontario still has a law that prohibits this — it considers providing natural gas to heat homes a “public good.” But as home heating options expand and the world moves away from fossil fuels, at least two municipalities in the province are pushing back.
Fatima has been investigating energy issues in Ontario since 2019: cultivating sources, filing freedom of information requests and poring over opaque technical agreements.
Her persistence earned her this week’s scoop: the Waterloo Regional Municipality, which includes the cities of Waterloo, Kitchener and Cambridge, recently declined to renew its agreement with Enbridge, which would have locked in 20 more years of free access for gas pipelines.