Green burial is often pitched as the simpler, lower-impact option — no embalming, no concrete vault, no steel casket, no manicured lawn to maintain. So it surprises a lot of families to learn that in Ontario, a green burial plot can carry the same mandatory maintenance charge as a full traditional grave. Whether that charge makes sense is genuinely contested, and both sides of the argument have real substance behind them.
The Fee Behind Every Plot
Every cemetery plot sold in Ontario, whether it's a conventional grave or a naturalized green section, is required by law to feed a Care and Maintenance Fund. The Funeral, Burial and Cremation Services Act, 2002 sets the contribution at a flat rate of the item's sale price, or a fixed dollar amount, whichever is greater — 40 per cent for in-ground graves. The fund's purpose is straightforward: it pays for grounds upkeep long after a cemetery has sold its last plot, so a community isn't left with an abandoned burial ground once the operator is gone. The Bereavement Authority of Ontario describes it as a mechanism that keeps cemeteries maintained in perpetuity regardless of who's running them decades from now — companies, municipalities, religious organizations or volunteers.
The rate itself doesn't distinguish by section type. A conventional grave, which needs mowing, fertilizer, pesticide, headstone repair and road maintenance indefinitely, is charged the same 40 per cent as a green burial plot, which by design has little of that.
The Case That the Rate Is Too High for Green Burial
Advocates at the Natural Burial Association argue Ontario's rate is more than triple the national average of 13 per cent charged elsewhere in Canada for the same kind of fund, and they've been blunt about how it lands on grieving families, calling the gap a "tax on grieving." Reporting from The Narwhal, produced through the Local Journalism Initiative, found natural burial plots in Ontario currently run $3,000 to $8,000 depending on region and cemetery — a range already shaped by the 40 per cent contribution baked into the price. That's set against a wider affordability picture: the average Canadian funeral now costs more than $7,700, and nearly half of Ontarians say they're worried about covering end-of-life costs for a family member.
The exemption that technically exists — a cemetery can apply to have the fee reduced or waived if it can show the site will be properly maintained without the full contribution — appears to be rarely used and isn't tracked. When asked how many cemeteries had successfully applied, a BAO spokesperson said the authority had no record of that information.
The Case Cemeteries and Regulators Can Make for Keeping It Flat
The honest version of this argument isn't "green sections secretly cost as much to maintain as a lawn." It's that the fee is insuring against a longer and less predictable timeline than a young green section's current low-maintenance profile suggests, and that "green burial" covers more than one kind of site.
A few things support that:
Perpetuity is the operative word. The fund isn't sized for how a section behaves in its first five years — it's meant to cover a cemetery's upkeep indefinitely, including decades after an operator stops selling plots and earning revenue at all. A flat rate is a blunt instrument, but it avoids betting today's low-maintenance assumptions will still hold in 60 years, against unknowns like rising labour costs, invasive species colonizing an unmanaged meadow, or storm damage to unmarked, undocumented terrain.
New sections need to build a reserve before they're self-sustaining. A green section with a handful of burials a year hasn't yet accumulated enough in trust to actually cover a bad decade, regardless of how low its ongoing costs turn out to be.
Standalone conservation burial grounds carry real costs that have nothing to do with mowing. This is a different model from a green section inside an existing cemetery. Organizations that run dedicated conservation burial grounds describe the fees going toward land purchase, legal protection of the site, invasive species removal, and propagating and planting native species at each grave — active restoration work, not passive neglect. A former farm field, which is what some of Ontario's proposed natural burial grounds actually are, doesn't turn into a stable native meadow just by being left alone; without intervention, it's more likely to be taken over by whatever aggressive species colonizes disturbed land first.
No headstones doesn't mean no records. A cemetery still has to know, permanently, exactly where every person is buried. That typically means GPS mapping, records systems and periodic verification — a real, if modest, ongoing administrative cost a simple "no mowing needed" comparison leaves out.
Where the Flat-Rate Defence Gets Weaker
This is also where the picture gets more complicated, and not obviously in the flat rate's favour. Most of what's actually opening in Ontario right now isn't a new standalone conservation ground built from raw land — it's a green section carved out of an already-operating cemetery, using land, staff and equipment the cemetery already has. For that model, the land-acquisition and habitat-restoration argument carries a lot less weight, since there's no new land to buy or protect and no restoration project starting from scratch.
There's a useful real-world comparison from outside Ontario: a cemetery manager near Victoria, B.C., who oversees both traditional and natural sections at the same property, has described the natural sections needing dramatically less staff time — a single gardener checking in on 150 to 250 graves a couple of times a month, compared to a full seasonal mowing and trimming crew for the traditional side. That's a direct, side-by-side account, and it lines up with what green burial advocates argue: within an existing cemetery, a green section genuinely doesn't cost what a conventional lawn section costs to maintain. Worth noting, too, that B.C.'s own maintenance rate is 25 per cent — lower than Ontario's, though still applied as a flat rate rather than split by section type.
The case for a uniform rate is strongest for a genuinely new conservation burial ground. The case for a lower rate is strongest for a hybrid section inside a cemetery that's already staffed. Most of what's opening in Ontario in 2026 is the second kind.
What This Means If You're Planning Ahead
None of this makes green burial a bad option in Ontario — it typically still costs less overall than a traditional burial with a vault, embalming and a hardwood casket. But the maintenance fee is a real, mandatory line item, and it's worth asking about directly and early. Ontario cemeteries are required to provide an itemized, written price list before you commit to anything; ask for it, and ask specifically how the maintenance contribution is calculated for the green section versus the rest of the cemetery, and whether that section is a hybrid plot within an existing cemetery or a standalone natural burial ground.
If you're still working through the basics of what a natural burial involves, our guide on how to plan a green burial in Canada walks through the process step by step. And if you're curious how access to green burial is actually changing on the ground in Ontario, see our roundup of new green burial sections opening across Ontario in 2026.
See which Canadian cemeteries actually allow direct earth burial.
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