Ontario’s Toxic Legacy is a public record page documenting 70 years of herbicide spraying in Ontario’s public forests. It brings together historical records, scientific warnings, public opposition, Indigenous resolutions, municipal action, and policy developments that show why this practice should end.
Most Ontarians have no idea this is happening, because 94% of the population lives in the South, while the “Rain of Death” falls almost exclusively on Northern forests and Treaty Territories without consent. This geographic gap has allowed the government and multinational timber companies to ignore 40 years of opposition in the North. But the wall of silence is crumbling, the truth is out, and together we are forcing accountability onto a broken system. The forests have a voice, and it is getting too loud to ignore.
Decades of Warnings, Decades of Inaction
1950s–1970s → The Agent Orange Era
Generations of foresters, Junior Rangers, hydro workers, trappers, and Indigenous communities in Northern Ontario lived and worked in areas where aircraft sprayed 2,4,5-T – one of the two active ingredients in Agent Orange. The danger was not just the herbicide itself, but its contamination with TCDD/dioxin, one of the most toxic synthetic compounds known to science. For decades, government and industry treated these chemicals as acceptable forestry tools. After years of public concern, protest, and reports of serious illness, Ontario restricted the use of 2,4,5-T in 1979 and made the final decision to ban its use and sale in 1980. Decades later, Ontario’s own Independent Fact-Finding Panel on Herbicide 2,4,5-T confirmed that some provincial workers, loaders, applicators, and Junior Rangers had been exposed to levels that exceeded safe thresholds. That history matters today, because Ontario did not end chemical forestry – it switched poisons.
1980 → When 2,4,5-T became too politically and toxicologically radioactive to defend, the industry didn’t stop, modernize, or transition to manual brush-clearing. Instead, they reached right back into the shed for the next chemical herbicide they had in line: Glyphosate. It wasn’t adopted because it was safe, it was adopted because the industry needed an immediate, cheap replacement to kill everything that would compete with their conifer plantations. For the next 40+ years, the public was handed the exact same corporate script: “Trust the regulatory approvals.”
1982 → Indigenous rights were officially written into the Canadian Constitution (Section 35), meaning the government can no longer legally ignore or “erase” Treaty rights and must respect Indigenous land and resources as the supreme law of the land.
1980s → Indigenous Nations begin passing formal resolutions opposing herbicide spraying citing harm to land, water, medicines, wildlife, treaty rights, and future generations.
“These Resolutions were passed in 1989 and 2004, respecively. Clearly, our concerns have not been met in these many years. ”
— Chief Keith Corston, Chapleau Cree First Nation
1989 → Warning ignored: A Canadian forestry study by Roy et al., conducted under boreal forest conditions at Matheson, Ontario, reported glyphosate uptake and persistence in wild blueberry and red raspberry fruit. Health Canada says it considered relevant published scientific reports during glyphosate’s re-evaluation, but its public materials do not clearly show whether or how the 1989 Roy et al. forestry soil study was weighed.
1999 → Federal warning ignored
The Senate Subcommittee on the Boreal Forest called for chemical herbicide use in the boreal forest to be phased out because of serious environmental concerns and the need to protect the health of boreal ecosystems and the communities that depend on them.
2000 → the Williams, Kroes & Munro (2000) Roundup/glyphosate safety review provided the cover used to defend and continue forest herbicide spraying for another 25 years, until it was retracted Dec 2025.
2001 → Quebec ends Herbicide Spraying in Forestry and Industry adapts
Driven by intense public pressure, Québec becomes the only province to ban chemical forest spraying due to environmental and public health concerns.
2007 → Political opposition placed on record at Queen’s Park
MPP Gilles Bisson presents petitions opposing forest herbicide spraying.
April 22, 2009 → Ontario bans cosmetic pesticides but Forest Spraying gets a PASS
Ontario prohibits lawn and garden pesticide use to “protect families and children” under Regulation 63/09, while continuing to spray the same chemicals over public forests and treaty territories.
2010s → The Carbon Myth. Carbon-dense forests are replaced with flammable plantations, undermining Ontario’s climate goals while claiming “sustainability.”
2015 → Global health alarm issued
The World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer classifies glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic to humans.”
2015 → Political Accord promised change
Ontario and First Nations leaders signed a Political Accord meant to guide cooperation on resource issues. Spraying still continues without consent.
2015 → Petition & Protests begin in Thunder Bay
2016 → Public protest reaches Parliament Hill
Communities and allies bring the issue directly to Ottawa as provincial governments continue to ignore calls to stop spraying.
👉🏻 2017 – Switching poisons begins: French-Severn Forest sprayed with Garlon XRT A public forestry notice showed planned spraying of the French-Severn Forest with Garlon XRT, a triclopyr-based herbicide. This proves the danger of focusing only on glyphosate. When one chemical becomes harder to defend, they think they can switch poisons like they did in 1980, and continue chemical forestry? 😳
2017 → Health Canada’s Failure. Despite rising global concern, Health Canada re-approves glyphosate for 15 years. This decision relied heavily on the Williams, Kroes & Munro (2000) Roundup/glyphosate safety review as its scientific cornerstone.
2018 → The first major Roundup verdict – School groundskeeper Dewayne Johnson won a landmark $289 million (later reduced) jury verdict after jurors found Monsanto failed to warn about cancer risks. The case became a major turning point in the public story around glyphosate and Roundup.
2018–2019 → The Independent Alarm. While the government followed a Monsanto script, the independent Ramazzini Institute released a series of global pilot studies. They found reproductive harm, endocrine disruption, and altered gut bacteria at doses the government still claims are “safe.”
2019 – Glyphosate residues found in forest plants one year after forestry spraying
Wood et al. found glyphosate residues in forest plants one year after forestry application, including residues in roots, shoots, and fruit in some species. This confirms what forest-dependent communities have warned for decades: these chemicals do not simply disappear from the spray block.
2020 → Bayer agreed to pay nearly $11 billion to settle about 100,000 Roundup cancer claims: The deal set aside $8.8–$9.6 billion for existing cases and $1.25 billion for a separate future-claims arrangement. Bayer did not admit liability, but the scale of the settlement marked a major turning point in the Roundup litigation.
2021 → The “Consent” Law. Canada passed the UNDRIP Act, a law that finally says the government must get “Free, Prior, and Informed Consent” before making decisions that affect Indigenous lands and waters.
2022-Present → Ongoing billboards and event outreach (Sportsman Shows) to raise awareness due to the fact that most Ontarians have never heard of Forest Herbicide Spraying.
2023 December → An Ontario court certified a Canadian Roundup class action for people with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma after significant exposure.
2024 → A Philadelphia jury awarded $2.25 billion to John McKivison, a man who said Roundup caused his non-Hodgkin lymphoma. The verdict was later reduced to $400 million, but it remained one of the clearest signs yet that juries were still responding strongly to the failure-to-warn evidence.
2024 → Earth Day mobilization demands Ontario STOP THE SPRAY
Stop The Spray Ontario, Indigenous Elders, Sierra Club, Safe Food Matters, and partners representing over 310,000 people publicly call on the province to end forest herbicide spraying.
2022–2025 → The court finds Health Canada’s regulator acted unreasonably by failing to properly assess risks and ignoring evidence. The approval is set aside, exposing systemic flaws in the regulatory process Ontario relies on.
2025 March → A Georgia jury delivered another massive Roundup verdict: It awarded $2.1 billion to John Barnes after finding Roundup caused his cancer. The award included compensatory and punitive damages and became another major signal that juries were still responding strongly to the failure-to-warn evidence.
May 1, 2025, all Registered Professional Foresters (RPFs) in Ontario are mandated to meet the Indigenous Peoples Lands & Resources (IPLR) Standard. This new professional competency requires RPFs to respect Indigenous jurisdiction and documented non-consent – making the authorization of the 2026 spray season a direct challenge to their professional standing.
2025 June → Independent Ramazzini Institute’s Global Glyphosate Study reported that prenatal-to-lifetime exposure to glyphosate and glyphosate-based herbicides caused multiple benign and malignant tumors in rats, including early-onset leukemia deaths, at dose levels corresponding to current EU regulatory thresholds.
2025 → A Wave of Public Protests Take Place
2025 → Municipalities Take Action: Moonbeam, West Nipissing and Larder Lake helped open the door. Now 60 Municipalities + 1 Unorganized Community across Ontario are supporting existing resolutions or adopting their own to oppose forest herbicide spraying. 👉 View the municipalities Supporting the End of Forest Spraying
2025 December → The Scientific Shield Collapses. The foundational study that regulators used for 25 years to claim glyphosate was “safe” (Williams, Kroes & Munro, 2000) was formally retracted from the scientific record after an investigation confirmed corporate ghostwriting and ethical omissions.
2026 February → Facing a mountain of new lawsuits, Bayer announced a massive $7.25 billion settlement to resolve claims that they “failed to warn” the public about the cancer risks of glyphosate, signaling that the company can no longer afford the legal cost of maintaining its “safety” narrative.
2026 → New forestry research adds yet another reason to move beyond herbicide-based forest management. A 2026 study in Forest Ecology and Management highlights trembling aspen as a natural fire barrier in Canada’s forests. That matters because forestry herbicide spraying is used to suppress broadleaf species in favor of conifer-dominated regeneration. In an era of climate change and smoke emergencies, this raises serious questions about continuing an old forestry model that removes mixed-forest resilience instead of protecting it.
2026 March → The Seattle Statement on Glyphosate and Public Health
International experts in epidemiology, toxicology, cancer, and risk assessment gathered at the 2026 Seattle Glyphosate Symposium to review newer independent science on glyphosate and glyphosate-based herbicides. Their Seattle Statement warned that glyphosate harms are not limited to cancer, but also include endocrine, neurological, reproductive, kidney, liver, metabolic, genetic, oxidative-stress, and hormonal effects. The scientists said the evidence of harm is now strong enough that no further regulatory delay is justified. They also warned that simply replacing glyphosate with other harmful chemical pesticides is not a real solution.
2026 Season → Breaking the Loop
The legacy stops here. Changing the name of the chemical from Glyphosate to Triclopyr or Imazapyr does not change seventy years of exposure, denial, and systemic failure.
- Suspend the 2026 forest herbicide spray season.
- Transition to non-chemical forestry.
Ready to act? Hold them all accountable!
