It’s a national holiday, but I’m working today — not because I want to work, but because Prime Minister Mark Carney made what I’d argue will be one of the most consequential announcements of his time in office yesterday.
He made it at a time when most people were getting ready for their day off, when rest and relaxation was creeping to the front of minds and people were preparing to turn off their brains.
Canada, under Carney, is abandoning major goals in our fight against the climate crisis.
“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,” said Carney, sitting at a dining room table with no tie and the top button of his dress shirt undone.
“Our emissions will be higher in the next few years than they were intended to be under the previous government’s plan.”
The admission was nestled near the tail-end of the slickly produced video Carney’s team published on Tuesday. The video appeared to be carefully crafted to soften the blow of these words — he rehashed past announcements and repeatedly reiterated warnings about the dangerous, unprecedented times we’re facing.
However, environmental advocates I spoke with saw through the spin.
“Walking back our climate commitments and doubling down on the fossil fuels causing the climate crisis will only make life less affordable and less secure for Canadians,” said Anna Johnston, a staff lawyer with West Coast Environmental Law.
Tim Gray, the Executive Director of Environmental Defence, agreed.
“2026 is poised to be the hottest year in recorded history, while Europe is burning and Canada is at greater risk than most nations,” he said.
“The need for climate action is more urgent than ever. Any other course of action is reckless and irresponsible.”
Can we really not ‘afford’ to meet the ‘short term goal’ of climate action?
Canada had previously committed to reducing its emissions by 40 to 45 per cent from the 2005 level by 2030. However, the government’s own report tracking the progress towards that goal admitted in December that the best Canada can achieve by 2030 is a 28 per cent reduction.
For context, that’s failing to even achieve Stephen Harper’s emissions reductions target — and it’s our best-case scenario based on modelling.
The day after Carney made his admission that we won’t meet our emissions reductions targets, a heatwave blanketed the country — prompting warnings in several provinces as Canadians gather to celebrate Canada Day.
Standing on stage addressing Canadians, Carney reminded them to hydrate.
“It is hot here,” he told the crowd.
These heatwaves, which kill people, are just one of the deadly consequences of climate change in Canada. We can also expect more wildfires that burn more intensely, forcing Canadians out of their homes and destroying local ecosystems. Extreme weather and powerful storms, flooding, and poor air quality are also just some of the real and devastating impacts of climate change.
Still, Carney said the Trudeau-era climate goals were “not sustainable over the long term.”
"It would have been too expensive for Canadians. Canadians who are already struggling with affordability,” he said.
Carney, meanwhile, decided Canada could afford to scrap a proposed hike to the capital gains inclusion rate — a tax that would have only applied to people who make more than $250,000 per year on stocks and mutual funds, or property they own for investment. Currently, half of these gains aren’t taxed. Carney made sure things stayed that way.
And while Carney tells Canadians we “can’t afford” to restrain the growth of oil and gas — which is Canada’s largest source of greenhouse gas emissions — evidence suggests that’s incorrect.
In fact, we arguably can’t afford not to restrain these emissions.
“The climate crisis is costing Canadians billions and dragging down our economy. Rising fuel prices are hurting Canadians’ pocketbooks, even as oil and gas companies rake in astronomical profits,” Johnston said.
“Meanwhile, those same companies claim they can’t afford to pay for their climate pollution and are lobbying hard for weaker regulations and more taxpayer dollars.”
According to the Canadian Climate Institute, the costs of climate change to our economy and society are “potentially catastrophic.”
Since 2010, the cost of weather-related disasters and catastrophic events are equivalent “to about 5 to 6 per cent of Canada’s annual GDP growth, up from an average of 1 per cent in previous decades.” Without efforts to mitigate it, ground-level ozone — a major component of smog — could cause over a quarter of a million people per decade to be hospitalized or die prematurely towards the end of the century. That has an annual cost “of about $250 billion,” according to CCI.
“Climate-induced damages slow Canada’s economic growth in 2025 by $25 billion annually, which is equal to 50 per cent of projected GDP growth in 2025,” the CCI reports also found.
Those aren’t even all of the costs associated with failing to adapt to the climate crisis.
Despite this, Carney is jetting over to Alberta today, where Premier Danielle Smith is set to make an announcement on Thursday regarding a proposed oil pipeline to Canada’s West Coast.
This tracks when you consider that, according to Carney, Canada's previous plan to beat back the deadly consequences of climate change was “too divisive for our country.”
Johnston rejected that claim.
“Danielle Smith has been fostering separatist sentiment for her political gain and to the rest of Canada’s loss,” she told me.
“The Prime Minister’s statement is a capitulation to oil and gas executives and rewards harmful political ploys at the worst possible time, as Canadians are being evacuated from wildfires, melting glaciers are flooding communities, and people from coast-to-coast are bracing for another hot summer. We need to ramp up our climate efforts, not abandon them.”
Tim Gray agreed.
“Premier Smith and foreign controlled oil companies do not scare Canadians nor will they successfully break up the country. We need climate and energy leadership that will take us to the future, not the past,” he told me.
In fact, as Carney plans to unleash growth in our oil and gas sector, the world is moving in a different direction — and Canada is already starting to lag behind.
A report from the energy research organization Ember found that the world is focusing its demand for new electricity on clean sources of energy, particularly solar.
Canada, it found, is lagging behind on solar. The increased focus on new oil and gas development is taking us even further in the wrong direction.
“The definition of an unsustainable plan is one that banks on ongoing demand for a fossil fuel product that is dangerous and insecure. Countries around the world are quickly figuring this out,” Gray said.
“Canada is at extreme risk of being left behind, with a product that is worth less and that fewer customers want. Unsustainable is any government plan that puts the lives and ecosystems of its citizens at risk. A plan that goes all-in on oil and gas expansion does exactly that.”
Shock doctrine and ‘flooding the zone’
In the video, Carney repeatedly reiterated the unique moment in time Canada is enduring — a continuation of a tactic he’s leaned on to build social license for his rollback of environmental policies.
In her iconic book, author Naomi Klein detailed “the shock doctrine.” It’s a definitive telling of how governments have used moments of massive shock, from war to disaster to political upheaval, as an opportunity to pursue pro-corporate policies the population might otherwise oppose.
Klein has told the National Observer that Carney’s deregulation agenda is a clear case of the playbook she unveiled in her book.
“It's a pretty classic example of what I've called the shock doctrine,” Klein said in an interview with the National Observer’s John Woodside.
“Canadians voted for Carney in a moment of shock, and in a moment of fear, because they did not want to be the United States and were saying very clearly we're a different country — and he appealed to that with all that elbows up stuff.”
Since then, Klein said in the December interview, Carney has “capitulated on pretty much every front,” and is now “completely trashing Canada’s climate commitments, and ramming through extractive projects.”
It also wasn’t lost on me that Carney made this admission on one of the ultimate “Friday evenings” of the year.
He published his video the day before a national holiday — one that landed in the middle of the week this year, which means many Canadians might have planned vacations or extended weekends around it. Newsrooms are short staffed, people’s attention is distracted.
That’s when Carney told us Canada won’t meet our climate goals.
It came on the heels of a of a major energy announcement. It came ahead of an announcement of Canada’s participation in Eurovision, and an upcoming pipeline announcement from Alberta.
Perhaps, then, it’s not surprising that to know that Carney acknowledged a tactic he learned from U.S. President Donald Trump.
While he said he doesn’t fully subscribe to it, Carney told Bloomberg in an interview that he sees “the effectiveness, the value” of “flooding the zone.”
Yes. We can tell.
