After announcing a massive clean energy deal earlier this week, Prime Minister Mark Carney took a victory lap.
“We're living through the consequences of a world that collectively hasn't taken climate change seriously enough,” he proclaimed. “Canada will do our part, not with promises and pronouncements, but with bold actions and major investment.”
The audacity would be shocking if it wasn’t so predictable.
Especially given, just a day later, U.S. President Donald Trump began heavily hinting the Keystone XL pipeline might be revived as a part of the ongoing Canada-U.S. trade talks — which would mean, yes, another oil pipeline.
Regardless of whether Keystone XL comes back from the dead, Carney’s climate record has been nothing short of abysmal. Far from doing “our part,” the government under this prime minister has abandoned climate targets, shredded environmental regulations, and aggressively pursued increased oil extraction in Alberta.
That’s not to say the new Churchill Falls deal isn’t important. Some climate advocates are thrilled with the federal government’s massive investment in clean energy and see it as a meaningful step towards Carney’s promise to double our electricity grid.
“The new agreement brings much-needed investment certainty for the Churchill Falls and Gull Island hydroprojects and will spur substantial new onshore wind power projects in Newfoundland and Labrador,” said Rick Smith, President of the Canadian Climate Institute, in a press release.
“It will also improve energy security and affordability in a time of volatile energy price swings while driving down emissions.”
The deal is also huge for both Newfoundland and Labrador and Quebec, for a variety of longstanding reasons that aren’t the focus of this piece. In short, this was a good announcement — though not final, as the Innu in Quebec have rejected the deal and the Quebec election could upend it.
But for Carney to use this announcement as evidence Canada is doing “our part” in the fight against the climate crisis, well, that’s just political spin.
“I don’t think the Churchill Falls announcement changes anything for me. We ARE living through the consequences of a world that collectively hasn’t taken climate change seriously enough, being led by a government without a climate plan,” said Isabel McMurray, a national policy analyst with Climate Action Network Canada.
“We have no clear vision of Carney’s climate agenda, we don’t know that he understands the consequences of his climate rollbacks (we have no data, and no modelling), and we have no coherent strategy for reducing emissions in line with our international commitments.”
Canada claims climate progress amid rollbacks
This particular flavour of political propaganda comes at a time when Carney’s government has pushed to reclaim some green credentials in the public eye. In addition to the hard push to sell the Churchill Falls announcement as evidence of its action on climate change, ads touting Canada’s push to lower emissions have been hitting screens across the country.
According to Meta’s ad library, Environment and Climate Change Canada has paid thousands to run multiple versions of an ad across Meta’s social media platforms alone.
The ad, showing scenes of Canadian nature interspersed with energy facilities and working people, asserts the government is “unlocking Canada’s natural power to be a global energy leader.”
“As the world races towards clean energy, Canada’s government will use our natural advantage to build world-class energy projects that bring down costs, create thousands of new jobs, and lower emissions,” one version of the ad claims.
The ads direct viewers to visit a government of Canada webpage that urges Canadians to check out the “climate competitiveness strategy” and touts the government’s “clean” actions.
In fact, I was recently at the movie theatre about to watch the new dinosaur movie The End of Oak Street (which was great!) when my eyes were accosted with one of these ads. My friend and I were shocked to see claims of Canada’s sustainability blaring out on the screen — especially given what Carney had said less than two months ago.
“We can’t afford to restrain the growth of an important part of our energy mix, oil and gas, to meet a short term goal,” Carney had told us in a YouTube video his team posted just before Canada Day.
“Our emissions will be higher in the next few years than they were intended to be under the previous government’s plan.”
The contrast between action and words is so severe that the NDP has asked the Competition Bureau to investigate Carney’s government over concerns it’s illegally greenwashing its energy policies.
But Canada’s laws around greenwashing are actually among the environmental regulations that Carney’s government has blunted in recent months. In 2024, the Trudeau government had amended the Competition Act to make it illegal for companies to make deceptive environmental claims. But in 2025, Carney rolled back those changes.
“These changes removed the requirement for environmental claims to be supported by an internationally recognized methodology,” the government explainer on the rules now warns.
Perhaps that helps to explain how the government can get away with what Carney was claiming during his announcement of the Churchill Falls deal on Monday.
“We’re all experiencing the changing climate. The smoke that is blanketing our nation, the flames that are threatening our homes, the extreme weather… that’s becoming all too common while reshaping livelihoods,” Carney said.
“Canadians won’t simply endure these challenges. We will meet them with determined action.”
What is Carney’s record on climate action?
While the Churchill Falls deal could help Canadians to access more clean energy, it doesn’t undo the harm Carney continues to do to the fight against climate change.
Carney stood alongside a beaming Alberta Premier as the two announced Danielle Smith’s proposed new oil pipeline to the West Coast. He’s admitted that Canada is abandoning its 2030 emissions reductions targets, telling Canadians we can’t afford to take the kind of bold climate action that would allow us to meet them. Carney is also actively embracing AI — despite its thirst for water and energy — and peeling back protections that keep endangered species alive in the face of corporate greed. On top of that, one of his most-touted climate “solutions” is carbon capture, a snake oil solution to the climate crisis that is more often than not used to extract even more oil from depleted wells. I could list several more of his climate attacks, but I think you get the gist.
Now, Trump is hinting that Canada could revive the Keystone XL pipeline expansion as part of a potential trade deal. The pipeline would create the capacity to send even more Canadian crude down to U.S. refineries — even as Carney claims we need to diversify our exports away from the U.S..
While this claim could be Trump bluster, CBC News reported last year that Carney himself had raised with the Americans the possibility of reviving the project. The end result of such a move could be disastrous for the climate.
“Politicians keep using pipelines as political trophies, when the truth is that any new pipeline will bring more wildfires, floods and heatwaves. That means lost homes, livelihoods and lives,” said Julia Levin, Environmental Defence’s associate director for national climate, in a statement.
“Reviving Keystone XL also exposes PM Carney’s claims that expanding fossil fuels will free us from our dependence on the United States as bogus. His reckless agenda of doubling down on fossil fuels has nothing to do with national security, and everything to do with the short-term financial interests of a very wealthy industry.”
At the end of the day, it was nice to finally hear an announcement from Carney’s government that actually could help in the face of the climate crisis. But instead of signalling a new direction for this government, there’s a significant risk this announcement could prove to be an aberration — one that is now being used as part of a greenwashing campaign.
