08/05/2025
In 1999, the Canadian Federal Senate warned: “All chemical herbicide use in the Boreal forest should be phased out.” (The Boreal Forest: Turning Over a New Leaf, Senate of Canada, 1999).
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A helicopter releases a fine mist of herbicide over a green canopy—part of Ontario’s controversial practice of aerial glyphosate spraying on Crown land.
With thousands of hectares scheduled for treatment this month, including traditional First Nations territories, questions about ecological and human safety are growing concerns.
It’s a stark message circulating this summer as glyphosate spray maps for 2025 are quietly released to municipalities and First Nations by the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry (MNRF). Some of the forests currently scheduled for aerial glyphosate spraying this summer include: Sudbury, Temagami, Dryden, Spanish, Pineland, Trout Lake, Lac Seul, Gordon Cosens, Abitibi and Nipissing Forests.
Each of these forests spans thousands of hectares of Crown land, including wetlands, watersheds, and hunting, trapping and cultural harvesting grounds used by First Nations for generations.
The herbicide operations are approved under Ontario’s forestry renewal system and are designed to suppress the regrowth of broadleaf species—often without full community consultation or meaningful public transparency.
In 2018, Dewayne Lee Johnson, a former school groundskeeper in California, became the first person to take Monsanto (now Bayer) to court over glyphosate exposure. Johnson had sprayed Roundup and Ranger Pro—both glyphosate-based herbicides—20 to 30 times a year, often without protective gear. His job took him across schoolyards, sports fields, even spraying near children.
Johnson developed non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a type of blood cancer. In a landmark trial that made international headlines, the jury sided with him. They ruled glyphosate was a substantial factor in his cancer diagnosis and awarded him $289 million in damages (later reduced, but the verdict stood). He wasn’t an activist—just a worker doing his job.
His case forced the public to ask difficult questions about chemical safety, corporate accountability, and the long-term risks of herbicides in everyday environments.
And yet, that same glyphosate is now being sprayed from planes across Northern Ontario—over wetlands, into cutblocks and across First Nations territories. Not with hazmat suits and warnings. But with aircraft.
The stated goal? Suppress the regrowth of native shrubs and deciduous trees like birch, maple and aspen—species that support wildlife, resist fire and regenerate naturally. In their place, fast-growing conifers like jack pine are prioritized for timber value.
In 1999, even the Federal Senate warned: “All chemical herbicide use in the Boreal forest should be phased out.” (The Boreal Forest: Turning Over a New Leaf, Senate of Canada, 1999).
Over 25 years later, corporations are still spraying. And climate change is making it all worse. Wildlife populations are crashing. Pollinators and birds are disappearing from once thriving ecosystems. Fish, forest foods, wetlands and drinking water are contaminated.
Our forests are being turned into tinderboxes – sprayed, dried out and filled with flammable conifers.
One major shift is happening under the guidance of Dr. Susan Chiblow, professor at the University of Guelph and a member of Garden River First Nation. She is leading a groundbreaking Indigenous-led research project on glyphosate’s impacts in the Robinson-Huron Treaty territory.
We’ve come to a fork in the road as humans,” says Chiblow. “If we want to continue to live on this planet, we need to develop real, life-changing solutions for chemical pollution.”
Chiblow’s team is working to develop a chemical risk assessment model grounded in Indigenous knowledge—one that respects emotional, physical, spiritual and mental health, not just regulatory thresholds. Their plan includes bringing decision-makers onto the land to witness, learn and listen to the communities who’ve been sounding the alarm for decades.
“When you walk into a place that’s been sprayed, it’s dead silent,” she says. “No birds. No insects. Just loneliness.”
Meanwhile, the Federal Court of Canada has ordered Health Canada and the Pest Management Regulatory Agency (PMRA) to reassess glyphosate by this August.
This comes after a lawsuit by Ecojustice on behalf of Friends of the Earth Canada, Safe Food Matters, Environmental Defence and the David Suzuki Foundation. The court found that the PMRA failed to consider independent peer-reviewed science when renewing glyphosate-based products like Mad Dog Plus.
“Glyphosate is the most widely used pesticide in Canada,” said Ecojustice lawyer Laura Bowman, “with residues detected in 70% of Canadians tested.”
As legal timelines count down and forest planes gear up, the question for 2025—and beyond—is not just “Is glyphosate safe?”
It’s:
Who decides what’s safe?
Who pays the price?
And are we finally listening this time?
A story bigger than Dewayne Lee Johnson.
“This is about food. This is about health. This is about the soil. This is about the environment. This is not the Dewayne Lee Johnson story. This is bigger than me.” – Dewayne “Lee” Johnsonn
