The Narwhal

Are environmental risks making Canada’s doctor shortage more acute?

The doctor shortage is a national problem. Worries about health-care risks in industrial and disaster-prone areas may be a ...
The Narwhal

Cut through a wetland: how Ontario’s losing a critical ecosystem

A developer built a trail through a wetland near Orillia, catching neighbours and the township by surprise. Across Ontario, ...
The Narwhal

A new way to fight climate change: cataloguing the DNA of the Arctic Ocean

Scientists are collecting DNA from the Arctic Ocean to create a better map of climate change and environmental health ...
The Narwhal

Annie Burns-Pieper

Annie Burns-Pieper is an investigative and health reporter whose work spans nearly 15 years with national teams at The Globe and Mail, CBC, CTV and Global. Her international reporting has appeared in ...
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Canada says anti-greenwashing law prevents industry from ‘speaking up’

Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government says it’s paring back parts of Canada’s anti-greenwashing law after hearing from fossil fuel companies and other groups that their “good-faith efforts” to ...
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Fast track to where? Carney’s major projects list stirs up emotions, and not much else

We’ve all pondered the sound of a tree falling in the forest. Many have also sought the answer to life, the universe and everything. But have enough of us considered the philosophical quandary of ...
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The day pipeline security followed me — and what I learned later about Canada’s spy agency

The truck slowly pulled alongside as I idled at the side of a remote dirt road in northern B.C. No cell service, the nearest town half an hour away. I’d pulled off to let industrial traffic heading ...
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Deer are destroying B.C. island ecosystems. Indigenous hunting could be the solution

The Gulf Islands around Vancouver Island are beautiful — full of lakes and sheltered bays, and dotted with meadows and deer grazing along the road. At first glance, most walking through these islands ...
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B.C.’s century-long feast on big, old trees has sent forests into freefall

B.C.’s NDP government has recently lent a steadying hand to its beleaguered forestry sector, pausing stumpage fees, expediting permits and investing in mills to prevent its looming fall — but some say ...
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U.S. funding cuts threaten wildlife on both sides of the Canadian border

On the border between the United States and Mexico, a black bear paces back and forth when confronted with the looming steel beams that form the border wall between the two countries. A pack of ...
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Slow and steady: the exciting world of slug racing

They came from thousands of millimetres away to compete in what must be one of the slowest events on earth, Bowen Island’s annual slug races. That’s right: those slimy, soft, land-crawling ...
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Alberta officials did nothing wrong when an oilsands leak went unreported for 9 months, report finds

A review commissioned by the board of directors at the Alberta Energy Regulator found the regulator followed all of its policies in responding to a leak at Imperial Oil’s Kearl oilsands mine in ...