Good morning. Cities like Toronto and Ottawa are trying hard to get a handle on their rat problem – more on that below, along with a nature-based rehab program for wounded vets and Justin Trudeau’s Mark Carney recruitment campaign. But first:
Today’s headlines
- Biden slipped in his unscripted remarks at the NATO summit last night, but reasserted he is still fit to run amid growing pressure to end his campaign
- Trudeau says Canada will meet its NATO’s defence spending target by 2032, but dismissed the benchmark as a “crass mathematical calculation”
- A judge found an admitted serial killer guilty of first-degree murder in the slayings of four Indigenous women in Winnipeg
Straight to rat jail.SCOTT SHAW/The Associated Press
Pest Control
The urban rat-astrophe
If you search Toronto Reddit for rat sightings – and I cannot stress enough that this is something you shouldn’t do – you will find all manner of horror stories. Rats popping out of barbecues. Rats dozing in a laundry pile. A whole multigenerational rat household emerging from a midtown tree planter in search of dinner. (Yeah, all right, here’s the link.)
According to pest control provider Orkin, Toronto is Canada’s rattiest city, and last week, two councillors decided they’d had enough. Alejandra Bravo said that rats have “overrun” her ward – which is, regrettably, my ward – and that Toronto needs a co-ordinated action plan to get the population under control. Currently, the city takes a siloed approach to rat reduction: Toronto Public Health manages infestations at schools, care facilities and restaurants; Toronto Water handles the sewers; Municipal Licensing and Standards deals with city facilities; and residents are pretty much on their own.
In their motion, the councillors suggested Toronto look to other jurisdictions battling rats, including Ottawa, New York and Alberta, to see what strategies the city might steal. Let’s get a head start on that work for them.
From birth control to garbage rules
Rats have always been a problem for modern cities – the sewers alone brought plenty of tasty treats – but construction projects and climate change helped swell their rodent ranks. Transit lines and housing developments disrupt underground burrows and drive rats into the open. Rising temperatures mean it’s rarely too cold to copulate, and rats are nothing if not prodigious breeders: One rat couple can produce up to 15,000 rat babies every year.
That’s why Ottawa is investigating a kind of rat birth control that reduces sperm in male rats and propels female rats into early menopause. It comes in pellet form, which is an improvement on New York’s 1960s-era plan to just leave estrogen-laced meat lying around. The challenge is that, in order for this contraception to work, rats have to keep consuming it – though the scientist who co-founded ContraPest swears the pellets taste better than pizza. (Rats love pizza.)
ContraPest recently became part of New York City’s multipronged rat campaign. To limit what Mayor Eric Adams called a “24-hour rat buffet” of trash on the sidewalk, New Yorkers can no longer take out their garbage before 8 p.m. Instead of chucking it in bags on the curb, they’ll soon have to put it in a bin, which Adams wheeled out this week to the soundtrack of Empire State of Mind. And New York now has its very own rat czar, whom the job posting insisted must be “highly motivated and somewhat bloodthirsty.” Still, smoking them out has been a tall order: Rats can fit through an opening the size of a quarter.
Alberta's public health department was not messing around in 1948.Government of Alberta/Courtesy of Government of Alberta
How the West was won
Alberta saw the rats coming. Over the first half of the 20th century, as the rodents scurried west from the east coast of Canada, the province got ready. It flooded train stations and post offices with posters promoting a rat-free Alberta. Then, starting in 1950, Albertans began patrolling a 270-kilometre stretch of border with Saskatchewan, laying down traps and scattering poison. The province initiated a firm no-pet-rat policy (with a hotline for, er, ratting out offenders). It’s been so good about responding so quickly to any sneaky invaders that Alberta has remained pretty much rat-free for more than 70 years.
Because of that, “most Albertans can’t pick a rat out of a rodent line-up,” The Globe’s Alanna Smith told me from Calgary. (For the record, she doesn’t think she could, either.) Last year, Alberta received 408 reports of sightings; only 27 of them were actually rats. “People see something small with a squirmy little tail, and they’re just like, yup, that’s a rat – get it gone! Put it behind bars!” Alanna said. “And then it’s actually just a vole.”
But Alberta had the advantage of working proactively. Is there any hope for places like Toronto, already on their heels? I asked The Globe’s urban affairs reporter, Oliver Moore, who wasn’t optimistic. “Rats are too tenacious. They eat too omnivorously and breed too enthusiastically. They’re survivors who will exploit our every vulnerability,” he said. “I suspect the best we can personally do is displacement: Keep a clean and tight ship and hope the rats find easier pickings somewhere else.”
Oliver did leave me with this modicum of a silver lining, which an exterminator once passed along. “He said that rats and mice don’t co-exist. So if you have mice – not great. But at least it means you don’t have rats.”
The Shot
‘This is the place where you don’t feel danger, and you don’t expect danger.’
This year, Wild Bear Vets hosted six injured Ukrainian soldiers and combat medics.Kari Medig/The Globe and Mail
Thousands of kilometres from the battlefield, Ukrainian soldiers are finding solace deep in the B.C. wilderness. Read more about Wild Bear Vets and its nature-based rehab here.
The Wrap
What else we’re following
At home: Justin Trudeau says he is trying to recruit former Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney to the federal government – but stopped short of saying whether that’s to replace Chrystia Freeland as finance minister.
Abroad: Sudan’s two rival armies are meeting in Geneva for United Nations-brokered talks on local ceasefires to facilitate aid and protect citizens.
On the job: A visit to the RCMP’s national training academy highlights the divide between how the force sees itself and how the public happens to see it.
In the pub: England plays Spain in the Euros final on Sunday, and everyone (including King Charles) is hoping that fans will be on their very best behaviour this time around.