‘No Canadian economy on a dead planet’: Carney’s first budget fails to connect climate crisis & economy

With the narrow passage of the federal budget early Monday evening, the unfolding Canadian politics of the day reflect a critical period in U.S. history, when George H. W. Bush won the presidency on the promise of protecting the environment and tackling what was then commonly referred to as the “greenhouse effect”.

“The barren spots in the mountains, the parched fields in the Midwest, the soaring temperatures throughout the country, all finally have got people believing what once seemed science fiction.”

With those heavy words, Netflix’s latest documentary, The White House Effect, opens with images from 1988, the hottest year on record at the time, when crops failed, rivers shrank and heatwaves cost people their life.

Then–vice president Bush, a Texas oilman turned Republican presidential candidate, seized the moment and called global warming “not a liberal or a conservative thing,” but “the common agenda of the future.” 

“Those who think we’re powerless to do anything about this greenhouse effect are forgetting about the White House Effect,” he said during one of his campaign speeches.

“As president, I intend to do something about it.”

 

Netflix’s latest documentary, The White House Effect, unpacks how Republicans changed the dialogue on global warming, climate change and greenhouse gas emissions: from a shared public concern to a partisan issue.

(Stills from The White House Effect/Netflix)

 

Perhaps Bush was unaware that the seeds of climate division had already been sown years earlier. 

In 1977, president Jimmy Carter, a Democrat, warned from the Oval Office that America’s “energy problems have the same cause as our environmental problems: wasteful use of resources,” calling for conservation and investment in renewable energy, even installing solar panels on the White House roof in 1979. 

Two years later, as the energy crisis deepened, Ronald Reagan was elected and rolled back air pollution standards, slashed Carter’s solar budget in half—ripping the solar panels off the White House roof— and loosened auto emissions rules. The moves delighted oil and gas executives, including Exxon’s, whose profits saw a 77 percent surge, while the company sold off its solar division.

Behind the scenes, Exxon scientists were studying the link between fossil fuels and rising carbon dioxide levels, which were confirmed in a leaked 1984 internal document. Instead of taking responsibility and changing course, the company, along with other oil giants, started shaping a strategy of denial and delay.

By January 1989, environmentalists grew hopeful when Bush took up residence in the White House.

Sound familiar?

One of his first presidential acts was the appointment of William Reilly, a respected conservationist, as head of the Environmental Protection Agency. But the defeated expression on his face, captured throughout the documentary, reflected the powerful political force that constantly pushed in on him.

In November that year, Reilly went to the Netherlands to attend one of the first major international efforts to set limits on carbon emissions. The U.S. delegation at the Noordwijk Climate Conference was constrained there by Bush’s chief of staff, John Sununu, who favoured economic expansion and had dismissed climate measures as “anti-growth”, blocking a binding agreement.

Four years later, Bush’s environmental resolve seemed to have faded when, after debating whether to attend one of the world’s largest environmental summits, the U.S. eventually signed onto the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit. The gesture was largely symbolic as the country refused to get behind the Convention on Biological Diversity and other firm commitments to reduce emissions.

The 1992 U.S. presidential election illustrated the latest deep division.

As recession worsened and voter focus shifted to unemployment, Bush’s approval ratings took a dive. Liberal democrats and environmentalists were criticized for focusing on global warming fears, while so-called scientists funded by the fossil fuel industry had successfully cast doubt on the mounting research.

Less than a decade later, successful lobbying by corporate interests convinced voters, by the narrowest of margins, that America could not do two things at the same time: save the planet, and grow the economy while doing so. Al Gore, the first major presidential candidate to run on a platform built around environmental policy, eventually lost a deadlocked race. 

The landmark Supreme Court decision that had to determine the election result, also effectively ended any serious pushback against the country’s all-powerful oil and gas industry.   

Now, an eerily similar pattern of economic and environmental political calculations is unfolding here in Canada.

And many environmentalists fear the narrow passage of the federal budget Monday evening, just like narrow victories of the past, marked a significant win for the major carbon polluters who do not want to see a generational shift toward a transformative clean energy economy.

Just like previous victories for the status quo, the spectre of a looming recession has quickly shifted the political appetite for progressive decision making.

Some economists have signalled the world economy is on the brink of a massive slowdown, and without strategic spending by the largest governments in the right areas, a global recession will be unavoidable.

Ironically, while global stock markets have been on a tear over the last few years, generating huge profits for the investor class, the economy itself has sputtered badly, with cost of living crises pounding the middle and lower-middle class in countries around the world.  

 

In April, an International Monetary Fund (IMF) report explained that despite the economic slowdown, global growth remains well above recession level. But due to  “Global inflation is revised up by about 0.1 percentage point for each year, yet the disinflation momentum continues. Global trade was quite resilient until now, partly because businesses were able to re-route trade flows when needed. This may become more difficult this time around. We project that global trade growth will dip more than output, to 1.7 percent in 2025—a significant downward revision since our January 2025 WEO Update,” the report noted.

(IMF/World Economic Outlook)

 

In December 2024, former Bank of Canada governor Stephen Poloz was one of the economists who declared Canada was in a “recession”. 

In January, Mark Carney, who, unlike Bush, has no direct ties to the oil and gas industry but did serve as board chairman of Brookfield Asset Management which has investments in fossil fuel infrastructure, made his move into politics. He was previously the firm’s ESG (environmental, social and governance) Fund and Impact Fund investing head, but left before announcing his bid to become prime minister.

Like Bush and Gore before him, Carney brought hope to Canadians simultaneously seeking economic stability and environmental progress. They saw in him a leader who could draw on his background in finance and climate policy as former governor of the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England, and as the UN Special Envoy for Climate Action and Finance. 

In March, he became Canada’s 24th prime minister, and by April, one of his first orders was to nix the consumer carbon tax, which was projected to cut between 19 and 22 million tonnes of greenhouse gas by 2030.

On November 4, Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne presented the much-awaited 2025 budget titled ‘Canada Strong,’ (calling it “generational in its ambition” to reshape Canada’s economy and future) which passed by a narrow vote of 170-168 on November 17, preventing a winter election that some were anticipating.

“Bold and swift action is what is needed. To weather the storm of uncertainty, we will not lower ourselves…Quite the opposite,” Champagne said boldly, with thunderous applause by supporters in the House of Commons.

 

Political scientist Laurie Adkin says Prime Minister Mark Carney may be trying to manage expectations before delivering what could be unwelcome news. “People seem to think Carney is playing some kind of clever game with Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, and maybe he is, but he hasn’t explicitly ruled out another pipeline,” Adkin told The Pointer. “My sense is he’s keeping options open and trying to keep her at bay.”

(Liberal Party of Canada)     

 

Carney’s first budget projects a $78.3-billion deficit for 2025-26, with no balanced budgets on the horizon for at least four years, and made the government’s four priorities clear: $25 billion for housing, $30 billion for defence and security, $115 billion for infrastructure, and $110 billion for productivity and competitiveness over five years.

Missing from those priorities are new environmental and climate action initiatives.

In a budget that promises generational investment, it seems almost ironic that departments and programs that supported climate action are set to face some of the deepest funding cuts including at Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) which is set to shrink by $1.3 billion as of 2030, the same year when Canada is aiming to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 40 to 45 percent below 2005 levels.

 

Canada’s 2025 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) progress report shows an uneven trajectory across the 17 goals, with many indicators still falling into the categories of “limited progress” or “progress made but acceleration needed.” While a handful of areas, such as quality education, clean energy, and partnerships, show stronger momentum and even some targets achieved, others, like climate action, life on land, no poverty, and reduced inequalities, display significant portions marked by deterioration or slow movement. Canada remains off-track on large parts of its SDG commitments, underscoring the need for faster, more coordinated action across social, economic, and environmental fronts.

(Statistics Canada)

 

University of Alberta political science Professor Emerita Laurie Adkin says it is important to view the budget as “a reflection of Carney's worldview as essentially a neoliberal economist.”

“He probably believes that what he's doing will have some indirect benefits for greenhouse gas emission reductions and other environmental aims,” Adkin noted.

“But the problem is that the budget really extends the same framework within which the Liberals have been working predominantly and the Conservatives before them…it should be quite evident by now that those kinds of approaches, which are predominantly about incentivizing private sector investment, are not working and are not sufficient to deal with the urgency of the climate crisis.”

And what was working before has now been rolled back, including several Trudeau-era programs like the Canada Greener Homes Grant and the Two Billion Trees program (as of August, over 228 million trees were planted under the initiative, representing only 11 percent of the target) — both part of Natural Resources Canada, which faces a total of $2.6 billion funding cut.

Forests Canada noted that the national charity “just had the most successful planting year in its 75+ year history, supporting the planting of approximately 4.4 million trees across the country.

“But our work is not yet done,” Forests Canada officials said in a statement. 

“Our commitment to tree planting and to our planting partners is firm: we believe our existing 2BTP contractual commitments are fully supported until 2031 and will be delivered to the highest standard.”

In an interview with The Pointer, Green Party leader Elizabeth May said Carney’s plan made her feel somewhere “between distressed and despairing”, criticizing the budget’s “lack of climate action” and minimal focus on adaptation to extreme weather events already happening. 

May stresses that the budget reads more like a document drafted to appeal to markets and corporate investors than one guided by science or international law.

“It feels like a budget written to compete with Trump’s ‘big, beautiful bill,’ not one to protect Canadians from climate collapse,” she added.

To “streamline” program delivery, the government has asked ECCC to eliminate smaller leases, trim external training contracts, curtail work deemed outside its “core mandate”, and consolidate efforts related to Indigenous engagement.

Deborah McGregor, Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Environmental Justice at Osgoode Hall Law School, says the budget reflects Ottawa “tipping toward economic development and competitiveness, often on Indigenous lands, with much less focus on actual climate action.”

Carney won the election earlier this year by painting his task as an existential one: to fight off the unprecedented threat of a rogue U.S. president and his destructive tariff-driven trade chaos. The PMs response, so far, is that his budget is exactly the blueprint Canada needs to diversify our economy away from America. Critics, meanwhile, wonder if he’s throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

“A lot of that isn't actually intended to deal with climate change,” McGregor told The Pointer.

“It's intended to address the tensions between Canada and [the] United States, and really trying to make Canada more competitive economically.”

Economists have argued the best way to do this is not by relying on old, harmful industries like oil and gas, which will be left behind in the knowledge-based information economy of the future, which will be fueled by clean energy. 

On November 13, Carney announced seven major projects for fast-tracked approval through the government’s Major Projects Office, a federal agency launched in August to ensure critical projects are reviewed within two years from start to finish, aiming to position Canada as an “energy superpower” and reduce economic reliance on its neighbours to the south. 

The list of initiatives included new mines for critical minerals in New Brunswick and Ontario, hydro projects in Iqaluit, a $30-billion Indigenous-led LNG facility in British Columbia, and a graphite mine in Quebec, collectively valued at $116 billion.
 

On the eve of COP30, multifaith leaders walked to environment minister Julie Dabrusin’s office in east Toronto, urging her to reject pipelines and choose new renewable energy projects.

(Anushka Yadav/The Pointer)

 

Released a week before the announcement, the budget proposed a funding cut of $65.9 million to the Impact Assessment Agency of Canada, which evaluates the environmental and socio-economic impacts of major projects, under the government’s “one project, one review” approach, raising concerns about unchecked development. 

Researchers at Dalhousie University have already sounded the alarm on the flaws in the existing environmental review process for mining operations in Canada. Even with the funding the agency previously had, data for 20 percent of the assessments researchers examined was incomplete or entirely missing from public records, making it impossible for researchers to accurately evaluate how mining operations impact surrounding communities and the environment, the recently published report noted.

In provinces like Ontario, where provincial environmental assessments are dialled down, environmental groups have increasingly relied on the federal agency to review controversial projects like Highway 413.

“We are living in a time when every budget should be a climate budget,” Adkin said.

“Every area of policy is connected to energy and climate change. And if this were a realistic budget, one that understood the reality of what we're facing, we would be investing massively in programs to ensure ecological and social security for the long term.”

McGregor warns the cut is eroding what she calls the agency’s “environmental rigour” in project assessments that require proponents to pay for studies, engage with Indigenous communities, and incorporate Indigenous knowledge when communities request it. 

How will it play out? She points to the Doug Ford government, which "loosened" its provincial environmental assessment (EA) process, moving to a risk‑based analysis and exempting many projects from full review as a clear sign of a broader national trajectory.

“When those processes are weakened, you change the triggers and thresholds for what requires an environmental assessment. Projects that once would have been reviewed no longer are. Sometimes departments are so understaffed they simply can’t do the work,” McGregor said.

“It’s not just environmental assessments we’re talking about…it’s species-at-risk protection, conservation areas, and Canada’s ability to meet its international biodiversity commitments and targets.” 

A 2025 Auditor General’s report highlighted Canada is not on track to protect 25 percent of its terrestrial land and inland water by 2025, nor are there plans developed to achieve the 2030 target of conserving 30 percent of these areas in ways that “ensure ecological representation, connectivity, and support for biodiversity and ecosystem functions.”

The Canada Water Agency, which coordinates with provinces, territories, and Indigenous communities to protect freshwater, will also see its budget reduced by $5 million.

As previously reported by The Pointer, internal messages leaked from environment minister Julie Dabrusin’s office revealed growing concern within the department where staff warned the proposed cuts could severely limit restoration efforts for algal blooms across the country, though the Great Lakes region would be spared.

Even Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO), which protects Canada’s only known cold-water coral reef at a time when coral ecosystems are reaching global tipping points, is facing over $736 million in cuts, scaling back research, monitoring, and reviews for low-risk projects while focusing on higher-risk impacts to fish and habitats. 

The government says it will “leverage artificial intelligence and other digital tools to modernize Canada’s fisheries management system,” reduce management layers, and simplify self-assessment for routine projects. 

Harbours will remain “fully operated, in good working condition, and managed by self-sufficient harbour authorities,” and freeing officers to spend more time on the water and in communities enforcing regulations, the budget emphasizes.

What troubled MP May the most was that the budget did not mention the Paris Agreement, the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework or even a single reference to endangered species.

To top it off, the Enhanced Nature Legacy Fund, a crucial program for meeting Canada's biodiversity targets, expanding Indigenous-led conservation, and species-at-risk recovery, was axed.

“Without funding to do the work to meet our biodiversity targets, the decline of biological diversity is likely to continue, making our food supply and natural resources increasingly at risk, and leading to higher costs and shortages,” Ecojustice’s director of law reform, Muhannad Malas, warned.

Instead, the fight against climate change takes a new form as the Climate Competitiveness Strategy, which focuses on reducing the country’s carbon intensity (the amount of emissions produced per unit of energy) rather than strictly cutting emissions, narrowing down on private investment and industrial tax credits.

 

The Canadian Climate Institute notes Canada is the tenth biggest greenhouse gas-polluting country in the world, with the worst record amongst G7 countries in reducing GHG emissions.

(Canadian Climate Institute)

 

McGregor calls the strategy “cleverly worded” but ultimately “capitalist,” arguing it extends the same market-driven logic that created the problem in the first place. 

Describing the language of “competitiveness” as appealing, she says the approach prioritizes economic growth and resource extraction including critical minerals found largely on Indigenous lands, without addressing the real impacts of climate change, such as record wildfires or community vulnerability.

The $257.6 million Ottawa is allocating to boost provincial and territorial aerial wildfire-fighting capacity “is not even close to basic requirements to save lives in this country”, May added.

 

2025 has been the second-worst wildfire season in Canadian history, just after 2023, with more than 6,000 wildfires in nearly every province and territory, impacting communities across the country and burning over 8.3 million hectares.

(Wildfires in Canada in June 2025/Natural Resources Canada)

 

The budget notes: “Lowering our emissions is critical to protecting the competitiveness of Canada’s oil and gas and steel sectors. Reducing emissions is not only essential for environmental reasons, but also a key factor in securing access to markets that prioritise sustainability.”

Ottawa is partly right: the International Energy Agency projects clean energy use will surge, with nuclear up 39 percent, solar 344 percent, and wind 178 percent by 2035.

Former leader of the BC Green Party and scientist Andrew Weaver applauds Carney’s emphasis on clean energy, critical minerals, and adaptation, positioning Canada for prosperity in the global decarbonization race.

“The person who gets to net zero first develops the technologies that everyone else will buy. China gets that. Carney gets that,” Weaver told The Pointer.

“This is the budget you would want to balance the actual pathway to net zero, as opposed to the rhetoric towards net zero.”

The question remains: how Carney plans to lower emissions when his government has offered no update on Canada’s 2030 or 2035 emission reduction targets, nor introduced new incentives to help Canadians cut their own energy costs and emissions including reviving the consumer carbon tax, and the electric vehicle and heat pump rebates? 

Public transit has also taken a hit in two parts. 

The first being Transport Canada projecting a 41 percent spending cut by 2027-28 from $3.2 billion to $1.9 billion, which could translate to a loss of 1,000 employees and scaling back emissions-reduction programs, with funding for “green and innovative” systems dropping from $672 million to $211 million.

And the creation of the Building Communities Strong Fund (BCSF), a $51-billion infrastructure program over ten years, which has effectively redirected funding from the Canada Public Transit Fund (CPTF) into a broader infrastructure envelope. 

The Canadian Urban Transit Association (CUTA) cautions that this decision erodes the stable, predictable funding transit systems depend on to maintain and expand services.

Under the CPTF, public transit systems were slated to receive $3 billion annually beginning in 2026 through dedicated, long-term capital funding, but the new fund “repurposes an unknown amount of CPTF funds toward broader infrastructure priorities.”

“The federal government has taken funding that was meant to strengthen and stabilize transit systems and folded it into a wider program without clear assurances that those dollars will still reach transit,” CUTA CEO and President Marco D’Angelo said in a statement. 

“This change undermines the very predictability and reliability that the CPTF was designed to deliver. Further clarity is needed from the government on what commitments they will be providing the transit industry under this new fund.”

The proposed fiscal plan also abandons the proposed oil and gas emissions cap and weakens recently introduced anti-greenwashing rules. On the other hand, it strengthens the industrial carbon pricing, makes key investments in clean energy and proposes plans for methane regulations.

 

The latest Early Estimate of National Emissions (EENE) from 440 Megatonnes shows that in 2024, the oil sands added 3 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (Mt CO2e) to Canada’s total emissions, outpacing all other sectors. Overall emissions remained only 8.5 percent below 2005 levels last year, leaving Canada far from its 2030 goal of reducing emissions by 40 to 45 percent from 2005 levels.

(440megatonnes.ca Early Estimate of National Emissions)

 

“It’s all incentives and no sticks,” Adkin said.

She observes that the oil and gas sector, largely in Alberta and Saskatchewan, currently faces a choice of either accepting a slightly stronger federal carbon pricing system or implementing the emissions cap, which had already been carefully reviewed but never enforced. 

Industry has resisted both, having long exploited loopholes in carbon pricing that have failed to cut down emissions.

Between 2005 and 2019, the oil and gas sector emissions rose nearly 20 percent, and continue to climb. To meet Canada’s 2030 Emissions Reduction Plan, the sector needs to cut emissions to 31 percent below 2005 levels.

The Canadian Climate Institute’s modelling of future scenarios shows that by 2030, without stronger climate policies, business as usual would put the sector’s emissions six percent above 2021 levels and 15 percent above 2005 levels. 

But it is still “highly unlikely” that the Liberals are going to implement an oil and gas emissions cap, fearing the backlash from the industry, Adkin says. 

“Prime Minister Carney says climate action is both a moral and economic imperative — it is also a legal one. The federal government may wish to forget about emissions in making climate policy, but this will not make its legal obligations go away,” Malas with Ecojustice added. 

The fiscal plan further complicates the path to net zero by supporting new fossil fuel subsidies for new, inefficient liquid natural gas (LNG) facilities and expansion of “clean” investment tax credits for carbon capture.

 

According to The Oil and Gas Emissions Management Regulations Annual Report, Canada has made significant progress in reducing methane emissions from the oil and gas sector, cutting them by more than half through a mix of provincial leadership, federal regulation, and targeted incentives. Pushing LNG projects can reverse that progress.

(Canadian Climate Institute)

 

Environment Defence’s programs director Keith Brooks says he is “disappointed” the government is expanding capital cost allowances for LNG and tax incentives for carbon capture and storage (CCS), when it is “an expensive and underperforming technology.” 

“Since CCS operations began in Canada in 2000, it has only captured 0.0004 percent of Canada’s GHG emissions,” Brooks explained, noting the investment tax credits for CCS are scheduled to continue until 2040, “increasing the risk of creating stranded assets”, going against the goal of economic resilience.

 

On November 10, over 130 multifaith leaders and Canadians gathered in Toronto to mourn climate victims, and then march to environment minister Julie Dabrusin’s office to submit a letter opposing new LNG pipelines.

(Anushka Yadav/The Pointer)

 

“This government wants to cut programs it deems ineffective, such as the tree-planting initiative, yet it doesn’t seem willing to apply the same level of scrutiny to the billions of dollars it is injecting into industrial projects with uncertain returns, such as carbon capture and storage,” Équiterre’s Climate and Energy Policy Analyst Charles-Édouard Têtu said.

Adkin recalls many political ecologists and political economists working on energy issues, trying to persuade the Trudeau government for years not to subsidize projects like Pathways Plus. 

 

The proposed route for the Pathways Alliance carbon capture and storage project would run roughly 400 kilometres from over 13 Alberta oilsands facilities in the Fort McMurray, Christina Lake, and Cold Lake regions to a storage site just outside St. Paul, where carbon dioxide would be buried deep underground. Over the years, rural residents along the pipeline’s path have raised concerns about safety, environmental risks, and a lack of meaningful consultation including potential pipeline ruptures, groundwater contamination, threats to Indigenous Treaty Rights, and the discrepancy between ambitious capture goals and historically lower real-world carbon capture rates.

(Canadian Energy Centre)

 

The government moved forward “incrementally”, playing “two sides of the game”, publicly claiming commitment to climate action while avoiding actions that would “antagonize” the oil and gas sector.

Now, Carney continues that game with the budget allocating $800 million annually for ten years, totalling $8 billion, in tax credits for the Pathways Alliance project. 

For Adkin, if Canadians want to understand the government’s priorities, watch where the money is.

The Youth Climate Corps, an initiative aimed at addressing both youth unemployment and climate issues that environmental advocates have been demanding for years, receives $20 million a year for two years under the current budget, i.e. $40 million total, compared to $8 billion for the Pathways project.

Compare that to Canada pledging to increase its defence spending to five percent of GDP by 2035 under a new NATO agreement, even when environment advocates and economists have been arguing that investing just two percent of GDP annually in the green economy is essential for the country to decarbonize and compete in the global energy transition.

Weaver believes Carney’s “smart” approach could finally bridge the country’s deep political divide over climate policy.

“In the lead-up to the last election, carbon pricing became a political football…people were misled,” Weaver said.

“The irony is that in Alberta, most households actually got more back in rebates than they paid in carbon taxes. But it became toxic, and Carney had to find another way forward.”

He says that path mirrors his own experience in British Columbia: moving carbon pricing upstream to industrial polluters and framing climate action as an economic opportunity rather than a moral lecture.

“You don’t campaign on fear. Every environmental challenge can be seen through two lenses: despair or opportunity,” Weaver said.

He believes the shift away from “unrealistic targets” toward “a realistic pathway to net zero” is a pragmatic recalibration since, according to him, “the 1.5-degree goal was never achievable.”

“The world has already warmed 1.3 degrees, and even if we stopped burning fossil fuels today, aerosols would drop out and we’d still hit close to two degrees. The real challenge is avoiding unbounded warming and every tenth of a degree we prevent matters,” Weaver explained.

He clarifies that his opinion comes from his experience in politics, where he has witnessed the “slick” lobbying by the oil and gas sector, which stands in stark contrast to the “disorganized” environmental groups.

 

Canada’s oil production hit record levels in recent years, and 2024 was no exception. For the fourth year in a row, the country set a new high for crude oil and equivalent production as well as exports, rising five percent compared to 2023. The completion of the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion in May 2024 opened up oil exports to countries beyond the U.S. by nearly 60 percent.

(Statistics Canada)

 

May rejects the notion that environmental movements should shift focus away from “targets” toward “goals.” She insists on clearly defined, enforceable targets, and Canada’s own environmental record is a testament.

For Canadians growing up in the 1970s and 1980s, life was far from normal. Two phrases shaped their everyday lives: acid rain and ozone layer. 

By the 1970s, lakes across Ontario, Quebec, and the Atlantic provinces had become so acidic that fish could no longer survive. Scientists traced the pollution to sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions from coal-burning power plants and smelters, much of it drifting from the United States. 

The political pressure culminated in a series of landmark agreements from the 1980 Memorandum of Intent on Transboundary Air Pollution to the 1991 Canada-U.S. Air Quality Agreement that imposed strict, measurable emission caps. 

Similarly, ozone levels declined over North America from the 1970s until the early 1990s, caused by human-made chemicals called chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) used in products like refrigerators and air conditioners. 

May, who was a Senior Policy Advisor to Environment Minister Tom McMillan in Brian Mulroney’s government at the time, recalls Canada standing up as one of the leading voices in the negotiations that produced the 1987 Montreal Protocol, a binding treaty that successfully phased out CFCs. 

In both cases, the targets worked. The air quality improved, the ozone layer healed, and ecosystems slowly began to recover.

What does life look like when emissions targets are left behind, when the economy takes the wheel, and the environment takes a back seat?

If Canada's experience with acid rain and ozone layer depletion isn’t enough, India’s capital city, New Delhi, serves as a reminder. In November, the city’s Air Quality Index (AQI) climbed above 700, the worst in three years, pushing citizens into survival mode as schools switched to hybrid classes, residents locked themselves indoors, and air filters turned grey within hours.

In 2023, air pollution was responsible for nearly 15 percent of all deaths in the city, according to Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) researchers who estimated that exposure to fine particulate matter (PM2.5) was responsible for roughly 17,188 deaths or one in seven residents. 

Air pollution emerged as a deadlier threat than other major health risks: high blood pressure caused 14,874 deaths, and high blood sugar (diabetes) accounted for 10,653 deaths.

“It's not the economics, it's not the technology, it's always short-term political thinking…and the oil and gas sector as a corporate player, as a lobbying group, performing essentially a form of organized crime and managing to undercut what governments pledge to do,” May said.

“Liberals seem to never learn that dumping climate action doesn't get them votes in Alberta, but they keep trying the same thing over and over again.” 

But it has certainly received a nod from Tory MPs, including Conservative Nova Scotia MP Chris d’Entremont, who announced that he would be crossing the floor to join the Liberals on November 4.

Amid Carney’s balancing act, McGregor and May draw a direct line between politics and the erosion of climate ambition, and “the politicking between climate and competitiveness.”

McGregor, an Ontario resident, says that the province already had plans for resource extraction from the Ring of Fire for years. 

“The current geopolitical climate is just being used as a catalyst to push that agenda harder, and because it’s being framed as ‘climate competitiveness,’ the public is more accepting of it,” she said.

“But what’s striking [at the federal level] is how explicitly climate is now tied to competitiveness. It’s transparent: the focus is on building Canada’s economy amid global challenges…much of the proposed economic development, particularly resource extraction, will take place on Indigenous lands, requiring partnership and consent. And history shows that ignoring these rights leads to conflict, so Indigenous response will be a critical factor in how this plan unfolds.”

She added that with COP30 showing that many nations, including Canada, are falling short of their targets, she is “not sure” whether this emphasis on economic competitiveness will actually help meet climate goals.

“There's no Canadian economy on a dead planet,” May said. 

She had initially said she would not be supporting the budget in its current form ahead of the House of Commons vote. But after Carney acknowledged her concerns and committed to meeting Paris climate targets during question period, May voted in favour of the budget because of Carney’s vow to meet the targets.

While U.S. president Donald Trump clearly isn’t a student of history, Canadian leaders have an opportunity to avoid mistakes of the past.

When William Reilly was interviewed in 2019, decades after his time as head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, he said with regret: “the advantage the United States would have had with serious reduction of greenhouse gases is that we might have removed the partisan nature of the dialogue of the United States, a Republican president afterall, that would’ve made some difference. And I regret we weren’t able to finally do that.”

In Canada, the tables have been turned. A Liberal Prime Minister has the same opportunity… as the country waits and watches him helm the ship, through a threatening economic storm, and a very real climate crisis–that is already here. 

 

 

Email: [email protected]

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