The Ford government has confirmed it is amalgamating Ontario’s 36 conservation authorities into just nine, a move critics fear will reduce key environmental protections and the government argues is necessary to provide “more consistent services.”
Minister of the Environment, Conservation and Parks Todd McCarthy, announced the changes at an event on Tuesday, marking a minor shift from a previous plan to reduce the number of conservation authorities down to just seven.
He said the change came after a wave of feedback from the public, municipal governments and even within the Progressive Conservative caucus.
“We’ve landed at nine as the consolidated figure with the boundaries that have been outlined,” McCarthy said. “We had a problem with fragmentation and inconsistency. We identified the solution to that problem. We listened after initially proposing seven, and we’ve arrived at nine.”
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He said the current system is too large, has too much duplication and results in a fragmented system, which can be difficult to navigate to obtain permits.
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“We listened and used feedback from last fall’s consultations to refine and strengthen our plan, including optimizing regional boundaries to better reflect local needs, knowledge and relationships,” McCarthy said.
The government said reducing the number of conservation authorities would “support the building of new homes and infrastructure,” as well as protect against flooding.
McCarthy said his office received 14,000 messages and consultations about its decision to reduce the number of conservation authorities.
The new conservation authorities will be:
Central Lake Ontario Regional Conservation Authority
Eastern Lake Erie Regional Conservation Authority
Eastern Lake Ontario Regional Conservation Authority
St. Lawrence River Regional Conservation Authority
Western Lake Erie Regional Conservation Authority
Western Lake Ontario Regional Conservation Authority
The new structure will also see the creation of an Ontario-wide conservation authority, which will help to handle a transition from 36 to nine conservation authorities over the next year.
McCarthy has repeatedly said his plans to reduce the number of conservation authorities will not result in job losses, despite the fact the mergers will mean fewer senior leaders are needed.
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A housing law from the Progressive Conservative government a few years ago reduced the role of conservation authorities, including limiting the areas they can consider in development permissions, removing factors such as pollution and conservation of the land.
A medical supplies vendor, contracted by Ontario’s taxpayer-funded home care agency, paid out a ransom demand last year, after its systems were accessed and data belonging to as many as 200,000 patients was locked, according to an Ontario government agency report.
In April 2025, servers belonging to Ontario Medical Supply — which works with Crown agency Ontario Health atHome to deliver equipment to homecare patients — were locked after a ransomware attack.
A ransomware attack generally takes place when a malicious actor enters a system, stealing its files and locking them. A ransom is then demanded for the company to get access to their files again.
While the Ministry of Health initially said no ransom had been demanded from or paid by either the government or Ontario Health atHome, internal government documents reveal the full picture.
Emails and other records obtained by Global News using freedom of information law indicate that a ransom was paid — potentially by the vendor, OMS.
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The revelation appears in a report submitted by Ontario Health atHome to the Information and Privacy Commissioner in late May 2025, with details of the ransomware attack along with confirmation that money was paid to the attackers to regain access.
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“Other servers were unencrypted with the key provided upon payment of the ransom,” the report said.
Global News attempted to contact OMS by phone and email, but did not receive a response ahead of publication.
“We have determined that a limited amount of incomplete data was exfiltrated during the incident … there is no evidence that any personal financial information or critical health data was exfiltrated. There is also no evidence that any of the information has been misused,” the company said in a statement on its website after the attack last year.
“Safeguarding the personal health information entrusted to us is our top priority, and we are committed to supporting any customers who have concerns or may have been affected by this incident.”
Ontario Liberal MPP Adil Shamji has raised concerns about whether the ransom was paid and if it, even indirectly, involved taxpayer money.
“This constituted malicious actors with sinister interests shaking down our province and our health-care system,” he said. “(It) only underscores how swiftly the government should have acted in order to fulfil their legal obligation.”
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The documents show that the ransomware is thought to have first entered the OMS system around March 17. It was activated on April 13, when the company’s servers were locked.
The report is not clear when the ransom was said to be paid to unlock the servers, but it took weeks for Ontario Health atHome and OMS to try and work out what data had been compromised.
By May 30, Ontario Health atHome submitted a report to the province’s privacy watchdog.
“OMS advised that a ransomware variant had been used to infiltrate encrypted servers storing electronic medical records,” the report, accessed using freedom of information laws, explained.
“Initially, OMS reported that no PHI appeared to be involved. Their subsequent investigation, supported by their cybersecurity experts, determined that there was PHI on the servers and that an ex-filtration of patient information was found.”
The report said that at the time OMS “had not been able to identify specific patients affected” by the breach.
More than a year after police officers in British Columbia dismantled what they said was the largest drug superlab in the country, the Ford government is bringing in regulations aimed at ensuring similar operations can’t start up in Ontario.
Toward the end of 2024, the RCMP busted an alleged drug lab on a property in Falkland, B.C., where the landlord said he had no idea what had taken place on the land he owned.
The landlord filed a civil claim months later after the provincial government tried to seize his property, where police had said they found “half a tonne of hard drugs,” as well as firearms.
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A new regulation posted by the Ontario government would create a criminal offence for landlords who “knowingly” allow their properties to be used for activities relating to illegal drugs.
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The regulation would mean that, if police suspect someone is allowing their property to be used, they can seize items needed for evidence, order people to vacate the property and recover costs of law enforcement.
In the Falkland case, the landlord denied any knowledge of the operation.
The regulatory proposal explains the legal change “would hold a landlord accountable for knowingly permitting illegal drug production and trafficking on their premises.”
The province indicated to Global News the reason it had created the regulation was to give it additional tools if a B.C.-style drug superlab from being created in Ontario.
“Landlords have a responsibility to ensure their properties are safe for everyone,” the Ministry of the Solicitor General said in a statement.
“These proposed regulations will ensure that landlords who knowingly allow the illicit production and distribution of illegal drugs on their property would be held accountable.”
The regulation has not yet come into effect and is part of the justice legislation the government passed last year.
A vendor contracted by the agency in charge of overseeing Ontario’s home care system suffered a ransomware attack, Global News can reveal – details the province didn’t share after the incident.
Ontario Health atHome, a body created by the Ford government to coordinate resources for home care and palliative patients, came under scrutiny last year after one of its vendors was hit with a cyberattack that was kept under wraps for months.
The vendor, Ontario Medical Supply (OMS), was first infiltrated in March 2025, before the company was locked out of “a significant portion” of its servers.
Ontario Health atHome didn’t immediately alert patients about the breach, but an Ontario Liberal MPP raised the alarm more than two months after the incident. Even then, details from the government about the attack were scarce.
“Following an investigation by OMS, they notified Ontario Health atHome that the outage was a cybersecurity attack and health information had been breached,” a statement last year read.
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Now, internal reports and emails obtained by Global News confirm the breach was, in fact, ransomware that locked servers and led to weeks of internal confusion about what data had been compromised.
Chris Nyhuis, a cybersecurity expert and founder of Vigilant, said that while there are worse cyberattacks than ransomware, rapid disclosure is key to ensuring impacted patients can protect their personal information.
“Once that ransomware attack happens, the attackers are doing two things. They’re encrypting all the data, but they’re also stealing the data, and they steal it first,” he explained.
“Early detection of that and early prevention, once someone has it, is really important. If an attacker steals (identifying information), if you protect yourself within the first four weeks, you’re probably okay. After that, they’re going to use it; it’s going to be out there, and your data is gone.”
The government told Global News it had disclosed the fact that an attack had taken place.
One message obtained using freedom of information laws shows ransomware was “earliest observed” accessing an OMS system on March 17, 2025.
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Less than a month later, on April 13, “the ransomware payload was triggered,” suggesting the malware had been activated.
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It was then, the messages show, that “OMS discovered the attack,” which is estimated to have impacted some 200,000 patients and included “name, contact information and medical supplies or equipment ordered.”
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Ontario health agency informed of cyberattack more than 2 months before telling patients
Liberal MPP Adil Shamji, who first revealed the attack last June, prompting the government to confirm it, said the revelation that the cyberattack was ransomware is key.
“It’s alarming that the scale of the privacy breach, the personal health information breach, was as great as it is,” he said.
“Until this very moment, the people who’ve been impacted by this and have potentially had their information stolen by a bad actor have never known just how much at risk they actually were.”
The Ministry of Health said that OMS is a private company and that no ransom was demanded from either the province or Ontario Health atHome.
OMS did not respond ahead of publication, but posted a statement last year.
“We have determined that a limited amount of incomplete data was exfiltrated during the incident… there is no evidence that any personal financial information or critical health data was exfiltrated. There is also no evidence that any of the information has been misused,” part of the statement read.
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“Safeguarding the personal health information entrusted to us is our top priority, and we are committed to supporting any customers who have concerns or may have been affected by this incident.”
In response to questions from Global News about why the government had not disclosed the exact nature of the incident, a Ministry of Health spokesperson suggested that saying it was a cyberattack was sufficient.
“From the outset it was made clear to Global News and other media outlets that the incident involving personal health information at one of Ontario Health atHome’s vendors, Ontario Medical Supply (OMS), was a cybersecurity attack,” they wrote.
“Reporting otherwise is factually incorrect and would be misleading to your readers.”
Ontario Health atHome did not respond to questions.
Timeline
March 17, 2025: Earliest observed access into OMS systems.
April 13, 2025: Ransomware “payload” is triggered.
April 14, 2025: OMS’ systems fail, indicating a breach has taken place and Ontario Health atHome is informed.
May 21, 2025: OMS confirms patient information has been compromised as part of the cyber incident.
May 30, 2025: The Information and Privacy Commission is informed about the cyber incident, including potential patient data.
June 27, 2025: Ontario Liberal MPP Adil Shamji reveals a cyber incident, the government confirms it and orders Ontario Health atHome to tell patients.
March 9, 2026: Cyberattack confirmed to be ransomware.
There is a difference between a cyberattack — which can cover a variety of issues — and ransomware.
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“A cyberattack could be anything from an attacker manually infiltrating an organization and stealing data or disrupting infrastructure,” Nyhuis explained.
“It could mean that they found an embedded threat — because a lot of times an attacker will embed themselves quietly and just wait because they want to come back later and do something — all the way to things like ransomware, where it just encrypts the entire infrastructure and takes it completely offline.”
Shamji said he was concerned that the government had not shared the fact that the attack was ransomware.
“They have an obligation to disclose, an obligation that they have failed to meet,” he said.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford says he is considering filling part of Lake Ontario to accommodate his vision for a massive new convention centre in downtown Toronto.
At an unrelated event in Mississauga, Ont., on Friday, Ford confirmed reporting he was considering filling part of the lake to build a new convention centre, which he has priced at “a few billion” dollars.
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“I wouldn’t call it an island, but we may look at putting fill in until we can put a convention centre,” he told reporters. “We’re exploring that.”
The premier said environmental work hadn’t yet begun for the plan, which he first began musing about last week.
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“That’s what would happen first. It’s no different from anything else; the environmental process would move forward,” he added.
“But we have a tremendous amount of fill right now, but we need to expand the land. I did talk to the mayor about it, and she was endorsing it. We need more land, we need a world-class convention centre.”
A trustee at Ontario’s second-largest school board says she and her colleagues were “fully cut off” from information about the provincial takeover, expressing concerns about how programming decisions will impact special needs students.
On Thursday, the Ford government confirmed that the Peel District and York Catholic school boards would be under provincial supervision, a move that has sidelined elected trustees and replaced them with a provincial appointee.
“I had a phone call saying, heads up, there is going to be some official news coming, but we’re not getting the board back,” said Jill Promoli, who was elected as the trustee for wards 6 and 11. “But we learned more from press releases than we did from the minister.”
The takeover is one that the government signalled was coming more than a month ago.
At the end of January, Education Minister Paul Calandra took control of the Peel District School Board, appointing himself as temporary supervisor, claiming that the board was about to lay off 60 classroom teachers, which required immediate provincial intervention.
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While trustees were given two weeks to respond to the minister’s concerns, Promoli said there was no direct communication with Calandra.
“We have been fully cut off since this announcement came on Jan. 28,” Promoli said. “Those of us who are the elected trustees, we have continued to speak with each other, but it seems like it’s just been silence, just radio silence for all of this time.”
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In early February, the board responded to the minister’s concerns with a plan to address the “financial impacts of declining enrolment” with a promise that the board “will not face an in-year deficit again.”
“We have taken clear and decisive steps to balance the 2025-26 operating budget without any impact on classroom teachers or education assistants,” the board said in a 10-page report to the minister.
“Then we heard nothing,” Promoli said. “It was just crickets.”
As the deadline came and went, trustees began to grow concerned about the province’s plans.
“After not being able to justify the supervision based on that report, they then spent several weeks trying to find other reasons to have justification for having taken us over earlier,” Promoli said.
The justification came on Thursday.
Heather Watt, a management consultant who once served as former health minister Christine Elliott’s chief of staff, was appointed to take over the day-to-day running of Peel public. Carrie Kormos, with a background in consulting and casinos, will take over York Catholic.
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Calandra said the moves came as a result of concerns about long-term financial sustainability and “infighting” among trustees.
“After careful review, it is clear that both Peel and York Catholic are facing serious challenges that they cannot resolve on their own,” he wrote in a statement.
“I have appointed supervisors to restore sound management, strengthen oversight and ensure every decision is focused on protecting student learning and success.”
Promoli, whose trustee profile has been scrubbed from the PDSB website, expressed concern that the supervisors, who don’t have a background in education, will be ill-suited to decision-making that could impact special needs students.
“Everyone’s just really sad,” Promoli said. “We’re there because we really care about the kids in our system.”
“Many of us are parents or grandparents of students in our board. We have former educators at the table. We’re just people who really love public education and want to make sure the system is working best for our kids.”
The move is part of a string of school board takeovers that began last year.
Both the public and Catholic boards in Toronto are under the direct control of Queen’s Park. So are the two boards in Peel Region.
Ottawa-Carleton, Thames Valley and Near North district school boards are the other three boards with supervisors.
The Ford government says it will be ordering school boards to begin printing paper report cards again for parents after some moved to digital systems.
Ontario’s Ministry of Education suggested in a statement that some parents had struggled with digital report cards, which generally need to be downloaded using a password.
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“Parents deserve clear and straightforward access to information about their child’s education,” a spokesperson for Education Minister Paul Calandra wrote.
“That’s why we are working to ensure report cards are also provided in paper format, so families have simple access to their child’s progress. Our focus is on putting students first and making the system clearer and more consistent for families across Ontario.”
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Calandra has taken a hands-on and controversial approach to his role, putting seven school boards under the direct control of Queen’s Park, blaming trustees for budget issues and governance dysfunction.
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He has repeatedly indicated he would be open to eliminating public school board trustees altogether, something Premier Doug Ford recently said hadn’t yet been decided upon.
A year after Ontario Premier Doug Ford ordered the LCBO to remove all products made in the United States, the government says roughly $2 million worth of booze has gone to waste.
On March 4, 2025, in response to the first round of tariffs levied by U.S. President Donald Trump, American alcohol was officially removed from the shelves of provincial liquor stores.
Ontario imported roughly $965 million worth of booze from America before the ban.
A year later, the Ministry of Finance said sales of Ontario-made alcohol products had increased roughly 22 per cent, with craft products up 35 per cent. A spokesperson said sales of VQA Ontario wines were up 52 per cent after the ban, which included California wine.
“We have been clear: until tariffs are completely removed, U.S. alcohol will remain off shelves,”
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Through the winter, the government resisted calls to auction off expiring American products to raise funds for food banks, a move which had been used in other jurisdictions.
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It means roughly $2 million worth of U.S. products have either expired or will expire in the next few months. Most of those products, according to the government, are beer, ready-to-drink beverages and wine.
Exactly what those products were and when the government worked out they would expire is a closely-guarded secret.
Documents obtained by Global News using freedom of information laws show there was extensive interest from the CEO of the LCBO and the Minister of Finance during the summer about what would expire and when.
“I am touching base on some urgent questions that we need LCBO’s input on,” an official with the Ministry of Finance wrote in one email dated August, 2025.
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“The U.S. inventory item is quite urgent at the moment and if you could provide answers to these questions as soon as possible that would be great. Please prioritize question 1 as the Minister is inquiring – we need an answer to this by Monday.”
What the minister wanted to know, however, is unclear. The majority of pages were partially or fully redacted by privacy officials, citing advice to the government and potential economic harm from their release.
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The documents suggest regular reviews of expiring American stock are taking place at the LCBO.
Privacy officials redacted the vast majority of information on expired U.S. booze.
After the Ford government made sweeping changes to how student loans in Ontario operate, disgruntled students are planning to rally at Queen’s Park on Wednesday.
Students are organizing a “hands off our education” protest at the legislature beginning around 12 p.m., focusing frustration on the province’s decision to allow tuition fee increases and shifting from grants to loans.
“The Ford government’s decision to open the floodgates to tuition increases AND the decimation of OSAP will destroy what’s left of education in Ontario,” a post from the Guelph University students read.
“Enough is enough – it’s time to take to the streets and flex the true power of students in the province.”
Frustration with the changes has been simmering since the Ford government first announced them on Feb. 12, allowing colleges and universities to increase tuition by two per cent a year, offering them more government cash and changing how OSAP works.
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The latter change is the one that has attracted the most energy, shifting public funding for students from loans to grants.
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The existing proportion of OSAP was about 85 per cent grants to 15 per cent loans, the government said, but starting this fall, students will receive a maximum of 25 per cent of their OSAP funding as grants.
Premier Doug Ford has said shifting from loans to grants would make students “accountable” for the money they take from the government, referencing alleged misuse of student finance.
“You are taking tax dollars and you have to be held accountable when you take tax dollars,” he said. “It’s not a freebie anymore. Money doesn’t grow on trees.”
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The Ministry of Colleges, Universities, Research Excellence and Security insists that, despite the premier’s comments, the move to loans is necessary to ensure the financial stability of the program.
In 2024, they said, there were 862 potential investigations for fraud across all OSAP grants and loans. The figure was 902 for 2025. The ministry would not confirm how many of those reports actually found fraud or the total dollar value of the alleged fraud.
Opposition parties have pushed back against the changes, saying the government is harming people’s prospects for post-secondary education.
The Ontario NDP said its “Save OSAP” campaign had seen 30,000 sign-ups and 30,000 emails sent to the offices of Progressive Conservative MPPs. They said 700 calls had been made during a phone blitz.
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The legislative assembly said it had not been told how large the rally would be, and the Canadian Federation of Students did not respond to questions ahead of publication.
The event is expected to run from around 12:30 to 4 p.m.
Premier Doug Ford is hinting that his idea for a brand new convention centre will be located near Ontario Place, promising an announcement once he has co-ordinated with other levels of government.
The premier recently declared the Metro Toronto Convention Centre was “one of the worst” in the world and said he would spend “a few billion dollars” building a new one.
The policy hasn’t been officially announced, but over several public appearances, Ford has dripped out details of what it could look like.
Most recently, he has hinted at where it might be.
During an unrelated event on Monday, Ford described how someone who visited his planned convention centre would remember the experience.
“Wow, this is world-class,” he imagined someone saying. “Then, I was able to go down to the science centre with the kids, then we caught a concert at Live Nation. Or we went to the waterpark.”
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Ford also said his plan would be for a “world-class, state-of-the-art” convention centre that spans two million square feet.
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In response to the suggestion that Exhibition Place grounds were the only area large enough to accommodate that size of building near the new science centre or Ontario Place’s planned Therme waterpark, Ford didn’t deny the idea.
“Just stay tuned, I have to just cross some T’s, dot some I’s,” he said. “When you see it, it’s going to be jaw-dropping.”
Ford made his concerns about the Metro Toronto Convention Centre public last Thursday when he unveiled new designs for the Ontario Science Centre.
That evening, he went to an event at the convention centre and repeated his concerns.
“The Toronto Convention Centre, it’s had its life,” Ford told a surprised audience. “It’s a terrible convention centre.”
The comment was met with raised eyebrows, especially by those working at the convention centre where the event was being held, prompting the premier to quickly say it was “no one’s fault in this room.”
The Metro Toronto Convention Centre, which describes itself as a “globally acclaimed, premier choice for event planners,” is a Crown corporation of the Ontario government located beside the CN Tower in the heart of the downtown core.
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Recently, however, the centre has struggled to fill the 442,000 sq. ft. of exhibit space and, according to a review by Ontario’s Auditor General, lost 20 international conventions “because the conventions had outgrown the centre.”
“Event planners we spoke to told us there was a shortage of meeting rooms and pre-function areas at MTCC,” the auditor said in a 2023 report, which highlighted that the post-pandemic occupancy rate stood at 54 per cent.
For Ford, the convention centre’s status also weighs heavily in the government’s decision.
“Do you know that out of 25 of the largest cities that have conventions, we’re in last place,” Ford told the audience at the convention centre on Thursday. “We’re going to go from number 24 up to number one.”
The premier promised this week his new plan for a convention centre wouldn’t enable a gambling centre in the downtown, something pitched more than a decade ago by one of the owners of convention centre land.
“It won’t have a casino, that’s an automatic,” he said.
