Emma McIntosh

Emma McIntosh is an investigative reporter at the Toronto Star who focuses on how environmental decisions, climate impacts and political power intersect, using documents and data to show who benefits and who bears the risk. Her work centres on climate change, land use and environmental policy, with a recurring focus on the systems and institutions that shape those outcomes. She brings an investigative lens to the environment beat, often anchoring coverage in records, freedom-of-information requests and deep reporting on governments and corporations.

Investigative environment and climate coverage

On the environment beat, McIntosh covers the tangible impacts of climate change and the policies meant to address them, pairing on-the-ground reporting with analysis.

Her Toronto Star work includes coverage of extreme wildfire behaviour in the era of climate change, explaining phenomena such as “towering infernos” and “zombie” fires and linking them to evolving firefighting challenges and climate risk. Earlier in her career she reported on environment and energy for other outlets, building a portfolio that spans pollution, resource extraction and environmental regulation.

She frequently frames environmental stories around accountability, showing how decisions by governments and companies translate into real-world consequences for communities and ecosystems.

McIntosh is known for treating environmental stories as investigations rather than features, relying on documents and freedom-of-information requests to surface what is happening behind the scenes. Her reporting has included work on an oilsands leak that affected Fort McKay First Nation, a story that tied industrial impacts directly to human rights concerns. Across outlets, she takes complex environmental issues and breaks them down in plain language, while keeping the focus on power, responsibility and long-term implications.

Greenbelt, land use and development politics

A major strand of McIntosh’s work examines land use and development politics, particularly around Ontario’s Greenbelt. At The Narwhal, she helped drive coverage of the provincial government’s move to open protected Greenbelt lands for development, connecting scattered map changes to specific landowners and prior reporting on developers. That work grew into a joint investigation with the Toronto Star, in which she and colleagues used land records and planning documents to show how backroom deals and political decisions shaped which parcels were removed from protection.

The Greenbelt reporting is a clear example of how McIntosh approaches environmental policy: she follows the paper trail, identifies the beneficiaries and explains the stakes for protected areas. The series prompted significant political fallout and was recognized with the Michener Award for public service journalism, underscoring her ability to turn complex land-use issues into high-impact investigations.

Her land and development coverage now extends into related stories about how governments manage protected areas, approve development and respond to public pressure over environmental safeguards.

Energy, elections and misinformation

McIntosh has also reported on the intersection of energy, elections and information, treating environmental politics as a national story rather than a narrow beat. At Canada’s National Observer she covered environment, energy and national news, including the 2019 federal election and the Alberta provincial election, with attention to how misinformation and disinformation shaped public debate.

That work explored how climate and energy policy are contested in campaign environments, documenting tactics used to influence voters and the narratives that emerge around resource development.

This strand of her reporting complements her environmental investigations by showing how political messaging and misinformation can obscure the real impacts of policy choices.

By covering both the campaigns and the underlying energy and environment files, she gives readers a clearer picture of how electoral politics and environmental decisions are linked. Her experience across multiple outlets on these themes informs later work that examines political responses to environmental scandals and development controversies.

Money, regulation and accountability

Alongside environment and land use, McIntosh regularly follows money and regulation, using investigative tools to trace financial flows and corporate responsibility. Her recent reporting includes work on a mysterious cash surge for an Alberta separatist party, where she examined donor patterns and out-of-province contributions to understand who was funding the movement.

She has also covered the gambling sector, including reporting on Tooniebet and its parent company Soft2bet and their responses to questions about their operations.

These stories share an approach with her environmental work: she relies on records, corporate filings and regulatory documents to test official narratives and highlight gaps in oversight. Whether the subject is a political party, a betting company or a government department, McIntosh’s reporting looks for where rules, money and power intersect, and what that reveals about accountability. That focus on systems and responsibility runs through her body of work and distinguishes her from more general assignment reporting on the environment beat.

Across climate impacts, land-use fights, election coverage and money-and-regulation stories, McIntosh’s through-line is investigations: she uses documents and persistent reporting to show how decisions about environment and development are made, who gains and who is exposed to risk. Her coverage is well suited to stories that involve complex environmental policy, contested land or regulatory scrutiny, especially where there is a clear document trail and public-interest stakes.