We need to look at a broader range of indicators to monitor economic well-being and grapple with Canada’s deeper economic challenges. The standard recipe of lower taxes, reduced regulations and freer trade just doesn’t work as promised.

Despite solid critiques from such as Canadian economist Jim Stanford or U.S. economist Joseph Stiglitz, the notion of gross domestic product per capita as a measure of productivity or economic success marches on.

To illustrate how the conventional dogma works, just look at a recent editorial in The Globe and Mail, which warns about the growing government deficits, and hence inevitable large tax increases or spending cuts. To avoid those hard choices, the familiar solution gets trotted out: “reigniting economic growth” through improved “labour productivity.” Then comes the well-known recipe of “reducing taxes, tearing down inter-provincial barriers, and de-regulation.”

The challenge, alas, is more complex.

Uncertain data

While productivity seems a useful concept when considering efficiency at a factory level, extending it to the economy introduces a whole set of problems. It was never intended to serve as a proxy for national well-being.

The standard productivity measure neglects structural issues like the economy’s shift from manufacturing to services, or how the natural resource sector produces little in terms of added value and remains vulnerable to price volatility. And how to measure productivity in the large public sector – education, healthcare, social services?

Rather, we should treat the somewhat abstract aggregate GDP per capita figure as a rough indicator of direction, rather than elevate it to gospel.

Misleading comparisons

It is tempting to analyze trends over time or compare Canada to other countries. The typical conclusion is that we are “falling further behind.” But it’s just not that simple.

For example, the impact of inflation needs to be removed from a series of annual GDP figures to generate real data in constant dollars. And yet, the choice of which price index to use can have a major impact on the result. Even the alarmist commentator Andrew Coyne acknowledged a few years ago that using a consumer price index instead of a producer price index changes a decline in Canadian productivity over the past nine years to a small gain!

Moreover, comparing across countries presents a statistical challenge. In a detailed 2014 report, Statistics Canada calculated that – after taking into account terms of trade, investment income and resource prices – Canadian growth in real income per capita was actually much higher than in the United States between 2002 and 2012. So much for the big panic.

Intuitively, it makes sense that an economy such as the United States with a higher proportion of more expensive private services will have a higher GDP per capita than Canada’s. The point is that big policy changes can’t be driven by comparisons that are so uncertain and inherently limiting.

An analysis using data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development shows that Canada’s labour productivity does trend lower than other Group of Seven countries over the last three decade-long intervals.

But take note of the two countries at the top of the pack. Aren’t France and Germany afflicted with high taxes, stifling bureaucracy and long vacations? They both have challenges, and neither are paradise by any means, but we should be looking to those countries for lessons instead of to Alabama, with its anti-union policies, deep rural poverty, hospital closures and low-wage economy.

The real questions

So, where do we go from here? Why, despite its imprecision and blinkered scope, does the GDP per capita measure rebound continuously, as one of those “zombie ideas” popularized by Paul Krugman that are immune to contrary evidence while suiting a particular political agenda. Yes, there are legitimate concerns about Canada’s low growth, declining rates of business investment and inadequate innovation. But we need to look beyond the simple productivity narrative and consider structural causes, such as Canada’s low value-added natural resource exports, the foreign ownership of much of the manufacturing sector (we have the subsidiaries, or “branch plants,” while major investment or R&D decisions are made at head offices elsewhere) or the protected oligopolies in key industries (finance, telecom, grocery), instead of simply “improving the investment climate.”

By constraining the conversation, we avoid confronting the real choices in front of us. We have made those choices before, and we can see their consequences clearly.

RELATED STORIES

Canada plays its hand on critical minerals with global investment push

Canada’s next big climate policy moment: new federal vehicle regulations

Carney’s grand infrastructure push is neglecting climate risks, leaders warn

For example, this chart shows that productivity growth de-linked from real wage growth in the United States around the time of Ronald Reagan’s neoliberal program, whose policy choices weakened labour unions, reduced taxes on high incomes and removed large parts of the social safety net. The increase in productivity created wealth, but it went upwards to the top 10%. This outcome then leads directly to the populist and authoritarian backlash affecting so much of U.S. society. Similar trends, albeit less extreme, are underway in Canada.

Assuming that our common goal is an economy that innovates, provides good-quality employment and generates sustainable increase in social well-being, we need to monitor what really matters and measure policy against a broader range of indicators. In that spirit, a “beyond GDP” initiative launched in Quebec in 2022 draws together a broad coalition of 15 civil society organizations. They have developed a set of about 70 indicators, grouped in 10 themes, to portray and measure well-being across economic, social and environmental dimensions. Each year the data is updated, and the concept is used by various levels of government to measure progress. The G15+ initiative now needs to be extended nationwide with greater media attention, since it highlights elements of well-being that are often neglected.

The Canadian difference

Canada’s historical choices for public services to provide shared needs has created a distinct culture and contrast with that in the United States. But this key element in our success is increasingly at risk. One repeated claim is that “we can’t afford it anymore.” But is that really the case? Most people are aware of the poor state of our infrastructure, inadequate social services and pressures of an aging population, plus the huge challenge of the transition to renewable energies. Those expenditures will put further strain on the deficit. Reversing previous tax cuts to generate revenue for such priorities should not be dismissed as impossible.
A study of the large cuts in federal income tax (personal and corporate) dating from the late 1990s, calculated the “lost” revenue to the federal government in 2016 at roughly $94 billion. For one year.

Another recent report in Quebec estimated the loss in Quebec revenue from tax cuts since the late 1980s at $12 billion per year. They suggested a partial return to earlier tax rates, and that, if focused only on the top third of income earners, would generate an additional $3 billion per year.

Finally, there remains the environmental crisis. The obsession with GDP growth increasingly ignores the reality of resource limits. A recent report from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research estimated that our collective economic activities are already exceeding seven of nine planetary boundaries.

And yet, the drumbeat continues for the same old orthodoxy: all our problems can be fixed, we’re told, with a return to higher economic growth. But the facts don’t bear that out. What if the realistic and sustainable route is one of continued low growth? We need to adapt our economic systems to live within our planetary boundaries. There is an urgent need to slow down, produce less of the harmful goods and more of what we need to be sustainable, and improve quality of life by redistributing and expanding public services.

When we challenge the productivity panic and growth mantra, we create space and vision to imagine alternative options for a sustainable future.

Stefan Harpe managed impact investments for funds based in Africa, Netherland and Canada. He is an amateur economist, lively sceptic and lives in Montreal.

The post When we fixate on productivity, we lose sight of better economic solutions appeared first on Corporate Knights.

Read the original story here. 

Last month in Santa Marta, Colombia, the world’s first international conference dedicated to transitioning away from fossil fuels convened 57 countries representing more than half of global gross domestic product, 30% of the world’s population and 20% of global fossil-fuel production.

Together, participants sent a powerful signal to markets, investors, industries and governments: the future belongs to clean energy, resilient economies and fossil-free development.

The conference took place against a background of increasing geopolitical, economic and security concerns, all of which are accelerating the energy transition.

Recent instability linked to tensions in the Strait of Hormuz once again exposed the fragility of fossil-fuel dependence. The temporary closure of the strait triggered what the International Energy Agency has described as the worst energy crisis in modern history.

Countries that have invested in renewables are proving to be far more resilient. China is leading the transition, Pakistan has seen rapid rooftop solar expansion, India is accelerating solar deployment, while Indonesia has developed a massive solar strategy, and enormous new investment in renewables is being made across the globe, including in Latin America and Europe. All of this demonstrates that energy security increasingly means renewable-energy sovereignty.

The global transition is underway, gaining momentum, and becoming irreversible. Indeed, global investments in the energy transition reached a record US$2.3 trillion in 2025, while renewable capacity expansion continues to accelerate worldwide.

Financial institutions are sounding the alarm

Salient discussions at Santa Marta revolved around the strong warnings coming from central banks, insurers, economists and financial regulators who are increasingly viewing fossil-fuel dependence as a major destabilizing risk. In fact, the European Central Bank now views fossil-fuel dependence as a macroeconomic stability risk, which makes the transition away from fossil fuels a matter of monetary policy.

The recent report from asset managers Impax stresses that financial markets are dangerously underpricing physical climate risks, as investors, insurers and lenders increasingly recognize that many assets exposed to floods, fires, hurricanes, droughts and heatwaves are likely significantly mispriced, overvalued and vulnerable to sudden repricing.

And the era of perpetual fossil fuel expansion is ending. While this doesn’t mean that oil and gas will disappear overnight, it does mean that betting national economic futures on long-term fossil-fuel growth is increasingly becoming a high-risk strategy.

Countries that continue to double down on oil and gas dependency will become exposed to a variety of risks: stranded assets, declining export markets, rising insurance costs, fiscal instability, trade disadvantages and growing geopolitical vulnerability.

Countries investing early in the transition – including electrification, clean manufacturing, renewable deployment, storage, critical minerals, energy efficiency and resilient infrastructure – are positioning themselves for industries of the future.

A momentous conclusion coming out of discussions in Santa Marta was the growing recognition that voluntary climate promises are no longer sufficient. Implementation requires binding legislation and aligning budgets with climate commitments.

Moreover, many studies show that the uptake for voluntary standards based on risks and opportunities has been limited in scope and depth and has not resulted in meaningful change.

Legislation can provide clear and consistent rules that can level the playing field and ensure an orderly transition. This in turn could foster the predictability needed by the private sector to attract domestic and foreign investment. In a time of high economic uncertainty and rapidly evolving geopolitical shifts, the ability to diversify economies and attract investment becomes more important than ever.

The Climate-Aligned Finance Act: a Canadian example

The Climate-Aligned Finance Act (CAFA), which is currently being considered by Canadian lawmakers, is a legislative tool designed to modernize the country’s financial governance. It intends to provide the structure and legal clarity needed for Canada’s financial system to operate consistently with our climate commitments. The act provides clear expectations and ensures that financial decisions support long-term prosperity, creating stability for investors.

At its core, the act is about accountability and transparency. The legislation would protect Canada’s economy and could support competitiveness in the global clean-energy economy. It offers a constructive, science-based framework that would help Canada to attract public and private finance for renewable energy and to build resilience and establish energy sovereignty.

The act would operationalize climate alignment through five concrete regulatory mechanisms: strengthening fiduciary and governance duties; tying capital adequacy requirements to climate risk; mandating auditable transition plans for federally regulated financial institutions; mandating a national action plan to phase out high-carbon financial instruments and promote genuinely sustainable ones; and mandating timely public review of progress on these actions, to ensure iterative learning and enhanced accountability.

Notably, CAFA establishes climate alignment as a duty for directors and executives of federally regulated financial institutions and state-owned Crown corporations and requires the appointment of at least one individual with climate expertise to certain boards of directors. To address the growing risk of stranded assets, the act encourages the financial regulator to ensure that financial institutions hold sufficient capital against high-carbon exposures. Furthermore, entities to which the act applies would be required to publish science-based, credible plans, targets, and reports on meeting climate commitments to ensure progress, not just promises.

We need credible and consistent policy to provide clarity and guidance to the financial sector for the biggest economic transformation we have seen since the industrial revolution. The act comprehensively provides investors with the certainty and security they need to invest in Canadian capital markets, helping to ensure investment-readiness well into the future while maintaining the competitiveness of our economy in a global market that increasingly values sustainable investment opportunities.

In January, the House of Commons’ Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development released its report on the impacts of Canada’s financial system on the environment and climate change, which reflected the committee’s in-depth study conducted in 2024 during the previous parliament. The first recommendation was “[t]hat Canada’s financial system be reformed to align with climate commitments . . . the Climate-Aligned Finance Act . . . which would itself provide a robust, science-based regulatory framework for conducting transition plans and annual progress reports and address greenwashing concerns around climate action.”

Legislation like CAFA is needed now more than ever because economic competitiveness, innovation and energy independence are dependent on capital flows being directed toward renewable- and clean-energy projects, as well as community-led initiatives to build resilience. Furthermore, the act’s integrated approach to addressing the greatest existential crisis of our time seeks to tackle the root cause of the multiple cascading crises we face: biodiversity loss, affordability, climate change and health.

Advancing global sustainable finance governance

The governance logic underpinning CAFA is transferable across jurisdictions, and governments might be inspired by the process used to develop CAFA. The act was created in collaboration with dozens of national and international experts and was refined based on feedback received during Senate committee study through further consultation with climate scientists, legal scholars and financial experts.

The act is grounded in climate science, financial expertise and the best international regulatory and voluntary practices. In short, the process adopted modelled the best practices of open parliaments, which favour a holistic understanding of the interdependence of complex problems such as climate change and finance and the development of evidence-based policies.

Climate‑related financial risks are increasing. The Climate-Aligned Finance Act demonstrates that effective alignment of finance with climate objectives requires enforceable governance. For central bankers and financial regulators worldwide, the imperative is no longer whether to act, but how quickly credible, accountable frameworks can be put in place to future-proof their economies.

Rosa Galvez is a civil-environmental engineer and an independent senator for the province of Quebec.

The post Canada needs binding legislation to align climate with finance appeared first on Corporate Knights.

That’s a real disappointment, to say the least. Industrial carbon pricing is Canada’s most consequential climate policy for cutting emissions and keeping costs low, but it needs serious reform. And while the memorandum makes slight improvements to the existing system in Alberta, the deal misses the mark by a long shot when it comes to living up to the policy’s potential, and it will have knock-on effects across the country as the changes are applied in other provinces. For the moment, it puts Canada off path in terms of reaching net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.

We’ll be talking about changes to electricity and industrial carbon-pricing policy for many months to come. But there’s another moment upcoming that deserves some greater public and media scrutiny: the imminent release of the federal government’s new vehicle emissions standards, the outline of which was announced by the prime minister back in February.

RELATED STORIES

Canada needs fast action on its new climate competitiveness strategy

For Canadians, decarbonization is a patriotic act

Think concern for climate change is passé? Think again.

At that event, Mark Carney made a clear commitment to achieve “the equivalent emissions reductions of a 75% electric vehicle adoption rate” by 2035. Our team at the Canadian Climate Institute will be watching closely to ensure that the details of the policy package give us the tools to reach this outcome.

Some analysts have already concluded that the policy will fall short.

The Pembina Institute, for instance, has modelled the government’s vehicle emissions limit for 2035 – measured in grams of carbon dioxide equivalent per mile – and found that it is not strong enough to achieve the 75% EV sales target. Clean Energy Canada has outlined a number of additional design features that will be critical for the new standard to meet in order to achieve the government’s goals. That includes questions around speed of implementation, applying a single standard across all vehicle sizes, and limiting compliance flexibilities that can undermine the policy’s integrity and reduce its emissions impact.

This is an important test for the Carney government, and not just because transportation decarbonization is critically important. This is really the first new climate policy the Carney government has announced. Every other policy it inherited from the previous Trudeau government and has either eliminated (like the consumer carbon tax) or retained in a changed form (like industrial carbon pricing and methane regulation). The new approach to passenger vehicles is a new goal clearly outlined by the prime minister himself. For the sake of its credibility generally, it behooves the government to ensure there’s a tight relationship between its expressed goal and policy detail sufficiently ambitious to get there.

This is not just a matter of reducing emissions. It’s also about ensuring that Canada keeps pace with the rest of the world and is positioned properly to succeed economically in this new age dominated by electric technologies.

Last year, nearly 100 countries broke EV sales records, according to the latest from the International Energy Agency. Globally, one in every four cars sold on the market was electric in 2025.

In China – the largest auto market in the world and the main destination of Alberta crude exports through British Columbia – nearly 55% of new cars were electric in 2025. This past April, that number reached upwards of 60%. That level of uptake is driven by superior technology and cost: 70% of battery electric cars sold in China last year were cheaper than the average conventional car.

All of this is affecting global demand for oil. In 2025, EVs displaced between 1.7 million to 2.3 million barrels of oil per day. That could more than double by 2030 to 5.3 million barrels per day, according to BloombergNEF.

These are massive disruptions to global energy markets led by rapid technology changes that are now unstoppable. They threaten to radically alter the future of the auto sector and oil production in Canada. Simply put, Canadians can’t afford to be left behind.

Rick Smith is president of the Canadian Climate Institute, the co-author of two bestselling books on the effects of pollution on human health, and the executive producer of Plastic People, a 2024 documentary chronicling the damage done by microplastics in the human body.

The post Canada’s next big climate policy moment: new federal vehicle regulations appeared first on Corporate Knights.

But a year into this government’s mandate, and approaching five years since the onset of the cost-of-living crisis, the details don’t live up to the packaging.

The section starts off strong, announcing the government’s intention to launch a “Whole-of-Government Competition Plan.” In theory, this is an excellent idea, championed by the former Biden administration down south and by competition experts Vass Bednar and Denise Hearn at home. Across the federal government, there are powerful levers to promote competition. Have them work together in concert and the multiplier effect would be substantial. But announcing your intention to launch something is different from launching something. For now, all we know is that the minister of finance and national revenue will be giving more detail “in the coming months.”

Saying you want more competition and doing the work to upset the powerful interests that most certainly do not want more competition are two different things.

– Keldon Bester, executive director, Canadian Anti-Monopoly Project

More worrying than the delay is the core of this intended-to-be-launched plan, which appears to be nothing more than a bland commitment to reduce red tape and get the government out of the way. Stop me if you’ve heard this before, possibly under Paul Martin, Stephen Harper or Justin Trudeau.

No weird trick

The problem is that many of the monopolies that haunt our lives are crafted not in red tape, but in kilometres of cables, football fields of warehouses and hangars full of airplanes. There is no one weird trick to fix the Canadian economy, and the frictionless callout against red tape (which is bad) in favour of competition (which is good) isn’t it.

If the federal government wants to shake up competition, especially in the markets over which it has the most direct pull, it needs to go to the heart of how control is exercised in those markets.

Step one is to beef up the Competition Bureau and appoint a new commissioner of competition with clear marching orders to put a halt to harmful takeovers and move quickly on the oligopolized markets that are often invisible to everyday consumers. The government needs to direct our telecom regulator, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, to double down instead of backing away from the regulations that allow independent competitors to build businesses on the infrastructure of incumbents.

Groceries are a clear test case

Riding on growing energy for public grocery stores, the federal government needs to invest in structural alternatives that put food on Canadian tables, including the unsexy but important food-processing and -distribution sectors.

Ottawa also needs to take public steps to restore consumer confidence that they’re getting a fair deal with existing competitors. Twice now, investigations by CBC’s Marketplace have found grocers systematically overcharging shoppers for meat products, even after commitments from the companies to rectify the behaviour. This is an egregious breach of consumer trust, yet the current maximum fine of $15,000 for an offending company is meaningless. Public denouncement, stricter penalties and stepped-up enforcement from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency are other concrete ways the government can make clear that markets need to be working for Canadians.

RELATED STORIES

Mark Carney’s ‘people’s fund’ puts small investors on the front lines of economic defence

Canada’s climate innovators need a faster path to market

As war sends oil profits surging, calls grow louder for a windfall tax

The federal government should also be partnering with the provinces – which have a clearer line of sight toward changing business practices – and leading a unified push against harmful practices like the property controls that allow grocers to dictate where their competitors set up shop. Manitoba is leading the way here, and its experience will certainly provide lessons for other provinces looking to deliver more choice for their citizens.

Still at the starting line

All together, these suggestions still represent only the first step toward a deep commitment to improving competition and making markets work for Canadians. Heck, even cut some red tape while you’re at it. But a generic enthusiasm for competition is no substitute for the real political fights that need to happen to make Canadians’ lives more affordable.

Of course, there’s a less pessimistic read of the announcement, which is that the government has the right prescription and is setting up for a bold push to deliver more competition for Canadians.

But saying you want more competition and doing the work to upset the powerful interests that most certainly do not want more competition are two different things. So far, it’s not clear that this government is prepared to do the latter.

Keldon Bester is the executive director of the Canadian Anti-Monopoly Project and a fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation.

The post Cutting red tape won’t defeat Canada’s monopolies. Here’s what will. appeared first on Corporate Knights.

As CEO of the Climate Solutions Prize, I meet founders, researchers and entrepreneurs from across Canada who are forging technologies that are not only cleaner, but better: superior products, superior economics and superior ways of solving entrenched problems.

They are not waiting for permission. They are already building the solutions the world demands. The next era of climate action will not be led by slogans. It will be led by builders.

Canada needs more of them. But we also have more of them than most people realize, and too often we fail to help them get from breakthrough to scale.

Opalia in Montreal has developed a way to produce real milk from mammary cells, without the cow and without the methane. In Kingston, Ontario, RXN Hub is building Canada’s connective infrastructure for green chemistry commercialization, providing the modular lab space, piloting bays and technical validation that climate ventures need. Dispersa, based in Toronto, has created biodegradable chemicals derived from wood waste that replace petrochemicals in cleaning and industrial products, cutting both toxicity and carbon footprint.

These are not concepts in search of a market. They are proven technologies, validated by independent experts, tackling urgent challenges across food systems, oceans and the built environment.

The bottleneck lies in moving solutions from validation to deployment, at pace. The issue is not talent; it is risk aversion. Too many promising technologies stall between proof of concept and market because our funding ecosystem remains too rigid and too slow at the critical stages. We need agile mechanisms to de-risk innovation in the eyes of investors, customers and strategic partners.

De-risking the path from validation to scale

What does connective infrastructure look like in practice? It starts with rigorous, independent validation: technical due diligence, third-party testing and feasibility assessment that de-risks breakthrough innovation for investors, customers and strategic partners.

This requires structured pathways where capital, innovation and government converge, not once a year, but as a permanent operating rhythm within Canada’s climate ecosystem. Initiatives like the Climate Solutions Prize are bridging that gap across seven innovation tracks, from energy to water to agriculture to the built environment.

The countries that lead the next economy will be the ones that not only invent breakthrough technologies but also create the fastest path from invention to adoption.

– Galith Levy, CEO, Climate Solutions Prize

The evidence suggests that the model works. When catalytic capital meets validated innovation at the right inflection point, investment follows. More than $12 million in prize funding has helped unlock more than $111 million in subsequent capital. That ratio reveals something critical: for many climate ventures, the barrier is not the calibre of the technology. It is the confidence gap, the hesitation – among investors, customers and partners – to be first to deploy a validated technology at commercial scale. That is where most climate ventures lose momentum.

A pragmatic path forward

I often hear climate innovation framed as a trade-off: growth versus responsibility, economy versus environment. I see it differently. The most compelling solutions I encounter are not the ones that ask the market to make a sacrifice. They are the ones that win because they are simply better: cheaper, faster, cleaner, more resilient or more profitable.

The countries that lead the next economy will be the ones that not only invent breakthrough technologies but also create the fastest path from invention to adoption. Canada has more invention than we often recognize. Our weakness is what comes next. Too many promising technologies stall between proof and scale because they cannot secure a demonstration project or attract the catalytic capital needed to move from a promising idea to a real industry. The countries that win will be the ones that solve that challenge fastest and figure out what risks are worth taking. That is the real race now.

RELATED STORIES

Quebec must move fast to retain its clean-power advantage

A clash over natural gas is brewing as Canada readies more action on green investing

Europe’s green retreat risks damaging its own businesses

What Canada lacks is not science, entrepreneurs or capital. It lacks a system built for speed.

The point is not innovation for its own sake. It is innovation that succeeds on its own economic merit and delivers measurable impact. What we need now is the willingness to move faster, take smarter risks and build the connective infrastructure that gets the right capital to the right technologies at the right moment.

This is not a uniquely Canadian challenge. But Canada has an opportunity few countries do: world-class research, extraordinary founders, and growing pools of capital looking for credible, high-impact opportunities.

The innovators are already here. The question is whether Canada will move fast enough to let them win.

Galith Levy is the CEO and co-founder of the Climate Solutions Prize. The 2026 Climate Solutions Prize Festival takes place June 8 and 9 in Montreal. For more information: climatesolutionsprize.com/2026festival.

The post Canada’s climate innovators need a faster path to market appeared first on Corporate Knights.

I recently watched Suzuki and his wife Tara – a force in her own right – perform a play called What You Won’t Do for Love. It made me cry and laugh in equal measure. During the Q&A, Suzuki lamented that the environmental movement has failed to move the needle on climate because we haven’t changed minds. That landed like a thunderbolt. Because he’s right – and wrong – at the same time.

Here’s what I mean. We have actually solved some of the most wicked environmental problems in history. The synthetic pesticide DDT was collapsing bird populations and poisoning ecosystems up the food chain – bald eagles were nearly gone. Acid rain was killing lakes and stripping forests across eastern North America. The ozone hole was opening the door to mass skin cancer. Leaded gasoline was robbing children of IQ points on a civilizational scale. All largely solved, or on the path to it.

What did these victories have in common? Two things: viable substitute technology and visceral stakes that people could feel in their bones. Your kids getting skin cancer at the beach. Your cottage lake dying and losing all its fish. These weren’t abstractions. They were urgent, personal and proximate.

Climate has been stuck in abstraction. The environmental movement got captured by end-of-world framing and forgot about people preoccupied with the end of the month. And unlike DDT or acid rain – where results came in years – the environmental payoff from cutting greenhouse gases won’t be felt for decades.

Which is why we need to draw a straight line to affordability. EVs, heat pumps and green power can cut household energy bills in half, putting thousands of dollars back in the pockets of working families. That’s not a climate argument; that’s a kitchen table argument, and it’s the one that wins.

England’s Zack Polanski gets this instinctively. Since becoming Green Party leader last September, he’s coined himself an “eco-populist,” sent a plumber to talk about cutting energy bills instead of saving the planet, and won a by-election in a Manchester riding the Greens had ranked 127th on their target list. The party now has more than 200,000 members and is polling ahead of Labour in some surveys. The insight isn’t complicated: people will vote green when green means cheaper.

The Global South is leapfrogging the rich world, driven by the logic Polanski is embracing in England.

– Toby Heaps, publisher and CEO, Corporate Knights

There is a powerful constituency that doesn’t want you to know about this. Oil and gas companies made US$4 trillion in profit in 2022, double their recent average, according to the International Energy Agency. If the Strait of Hormuz stays disrupted, we’re heading back there fast. The winners are the world’s three biggest oil producers: the United States, Saudi Arabia and Russia. Everyone on the wrong side of that trade – the majority of the planet – pays.

Now look at who’s actually leading on EVs and renewable energy. It’s not latte-sipping liberals in rich countries. Nine of the top 10 fastest-growing EV markets are outside the rich country OECD club. Eight of 10 in renewable-energy growth. Nepal (76% of new sales are EVs), Ethiopia (60%), Vietnam, Pakistan – which imported 17 gigawatts of solar panels in a single year because electricity prices were crushing people and solar was saving them money – are all moving fast. Not for climate reasons. For economic survival reasons. The Global South is leapfrogging the rich world, driven by the logic Polanski is embracing in England.

RELATED STORIES

The 2026 Global 100 list puts speed in the spotlight

How to scale up the green economy

Trump’s war on wind is pushing investment north to Canada

In the United States, gas prices have jumped from $2.85 before the military buildup on January 23 to $4.06 a gallon (as of April 24), according to the American Automobile Association – costing the average American an extra $20 a week and driving Trump’s economic approval to record lows, below even Biden’s worst numbers.

For Canada and Alberta, Norway is the most instructive example. Also a major oil exporter, Norway plows its petroleum profits into a sovereign wealth fund now north of US$2 trillion. But like a good drug dealer, Norway doesn’t touch its own product – 92% of new vehicles sold are electric, and 99% of its electricity is renewable.

Kermit said it’s not easy being green. He was a great frog. But anyone who still believes that message is buying into a fraud.

Toby Heaps is co-founder and publisher of Corporate Knights.

The post Publisher’s Note: Kermit was wrong appeared first on Corporate Knights.

I mean, that’s the received wisdom of the moment. The media are full of commentators (many of whom, like this guy, barely believe that climate change is real) crowing about the so-called collapse of net-zero.

Over the past year it has sometimes felt as though the issue has been banished from polite company, relegated to the nosebleeds in the national political arena.

But here’s the thing: climate change hasn’t disappeared from the consciousness of Canadians. It’s simply been displaced, at the moment, by other issues. As pollster David Coletto has found, “At the top of Canadians’ worry list sit the rising cost of living (66%), the economy (39%) and healthcare (35%). The public mood is focused intensely on the pressures of the everyday.”

There’s lots of evidence that Canadians still feel strongly about climate change, despite this recent reshuffling of their priorities. Nearly two-thirds of Canadians think of it as a “major crisis,” and clear supermajorities think governments and companies should be doing more to address it.

So, what should we make of all this?

2026 marks 30 years that I’ve been a working advocate for environmental progress. Through multiple great organizations, countless campaigns and every kind of sustainability issue you can imagine, here’s one of my most important lessons learned – a good thing to remember this Earth Day:

Though it has its ups and downs, concern about climate change will always come roaring back as a top public concern.

There are at least two reasons for this that are often lost on commentators who are too focused on the temporary swings in issue polling.

The first is that, as I’ve said many times in this space, climate change progress is now driven by technological and economic trends that are unstoppable. These trends have been accelerating for years. But they have now been turbocharged by the Iran war, which is constraining global oil and gas supply and cranking up the price of gasoline and natural gas. As a result, consumers are rushing to buy electric options that are increasingly affordable and not subject to these wild price swings: from electric vehicles to solar panels to induction stoves, in places as diverse as Lagos, San Francisco and New Delhi.

The second reason is that – perhaps unique among public policy issues – climate change has a built-in ratcheting effect. Even if we stopped all production of carbon dioxide tomorrow, more severe wildfires and flooding and drought are going to keep getting worse around the world. The negative impacts of climate change are increasingly visible and dramatic and measurable.

It’s quite often the case that policy files get bumped back up the priority list only because of things going wrong. One recent example that people may remember is the safety of long-term care homes. Before the pandemic, provincial governments scarcely gave it a thought, and regulatory oversight and public scrutiny were almost non-existent. When the death toll among the elderly in long-term care homes tragically took off during the pandemic, public outrage forced those governments to move quickly to address the issue.

The grim reality is that climate change is going to serve up endless, worsening, disasters over the next few decades to fire up the public imagination, and force a political response.

The issue may wax and wane in prominence, but it will never disappear for long.

RELATED STORIES

Canada needs fast action on its new climate competitiveness strategy

For Canadians, decarbonization is a patriotic act

What does climate change progress look like?

Let’s get even more specific as to timing: because so much of the climate change malaise currently afflicting the world is related to the bone-headed moves of the Trump administration (my most recent favourite being the payment of US$1 billion to a French energy company to refrain from building offshore wind farms on leases it had purchased), I’m going to predict that climate change starts re-entering the public discourse on November 4, the day after the Democrats pick up considerable seats in the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate, which all public polling says they are on track to do.

Democrats have internalized an urgency to solve climate change. Yes, this may vary from candidate to candidate and from place to place, but whether it’s centrist Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger’s commitment to accelerating clean-energy deployment or progressive New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s tying together of heat pumps and affordability, a basic commitment to reducing greenhouse gas emissions is a permanent part of the Democratic Party’s offering.

Why is this the case? Because it’s a big deal for a significant majority of their voting base. More than 85% of registered Democrats think that developing clean energy should be a high or very high priority for government. But beyond the brass tacks of electoral incentives, there is the hard-headed dollars-and-cents argument that the United States cannot let China dominate this new industrial revolution powered by clean electricity and electrical machines like EVs and heat pumps.

History will record Donald Trump’s quixotic crusade against windmills and the rest of the clean-energy transition as an irrational, short-lived and economically disastrous footnote.

So this Earth Day, take heart: the pendulum of climate change concern is about to swing again. We’re almost through this difficult period. This time next year it’s going to be a whole new ball game. And we’re going to be on the offence again.

Rick Smith is president of the Canadian Climate Institute, the co-author of two bestselling books on the effects of pollution on human health, and the executive producer of Plastic People, a 2024 documentary chronicling the damage done by microplastics in the human body.

The post Think concern for climate change is passé? Think again. appeared first on Corporate Knights.

Addressing these issues will take capital. The federal government has openly courted international capital to fill major funding gaps in everything from agriculture to tech and artificial intelligence. But there’s already money in Canada, specifically from the philanthropic sector, that could play a greater role in addressing our domestic crises.

The philanthropic sector, in the form of community and private foundations, plays a critical role in funding charities and non-profits that support Canadians, with many on the front lines of these issues, funding food banks, shelters, crisis teams and much more.

We have proof of concept, and many foundations across Canada, the United States and Europe have been investing impactfully for decades.

– Rudi Wallace, CEO, Hamilton Community Foundation

Foundations are federally mandated to give 5% of their endowments annually as grants, which means $10 billion each year going to the important work of these community-serving organizations. This is essential funding doing good work.

But granting is not the only monetary tool available to the philanthropic sector to address critical issues facing Canadians. Impact investing is also a powerful mechanism to drive change.

Foundations in Canada control significant endowments – to the tune of $135 billion. The vast majority of these assets are invested in public markets to garner the greatest return on investment possible, with interest then used to provide charitable and non-profit grants and cover expenses.

More foundations and other philanthropic organizations could turn to impact investing to achieve both financial and societal benefits.

The opportunities are sizeable

Impact investing deploys capital to charities and mission-driven investment firms with the goal of creating both financial and positive social returns. It funds climate solutions and creates affordable and supportive housing.

Across the country, many foundations are already deploying more of their assets through impact investments. And they’re seeing real progress. Scaling this movement across the country would have great benefits to Canadians.

Investment by The Atmospheric Fund in a recycling facility for magnets in electric vehicles has helped save 11 tonnes of carbon emissions for every tonne of high-strength “neo magnets” used in cleantech. They also partnered with London Community Foundation, among others, in a project to produce renewable natural gas, while reducing carbon emissions by 110,000 tonnes over 15 years.

RELATED STORIES

What does climate change progress look like?

It’s time to address Canada’s major shortfalls in climate adaptation

When we choose war, we cannibalize the solution

Investments by foundations in Vancouver’s Renewal Funds, for example, have helped drive the success of the Renewal4 Fund. Renewal4 backs climate tech ventures that have delivered major environmental benefits: 37 million kilolitres of water saved, 4.3 million tonnes of greenhouse-gas emissions reduced, 30 million kilograms of waste diverted from landfills, and 12,000 acres of land now under sustainable management.

The Lawson Foundation partnered with Aki Energy, an Indigenous-led non-profit social enterprise enabling clean-energy solutions in remote communities. Their investment supports the installation of 125 residential geothermal units in four on-reserve communities in Manitoba.

New Market Funds is partnering with private foundations like the Real Estate Foundation of BC and Trico Foundation to invest in 636 affordable housing units. The Lucie and André Chagnon Foundation has invested alongside partners in Quebec to build 1,500 units of affordable student housing.

Over the past 10 years, Hamilton Community Foundation has invested $31 million of its endowment into supportive and affordable housing, which has led to the construction of more than 1,000 units. This support gets projects shovel-ready, providing a pathway for governments and financial partners to come in with the lion’s share of funding.

A solution at the ready

Some of the additional capital we need to fix Canada’s problems is already right here at home if we can leverage philanthropic endowments through impact investing.

A common pushback to this argument is that returns from impact investments won’t cover the 5% payout required by government policy and won’t keep up with inflation. Criticism also focuses on the lack of investment options and benchmarks.

Yet the global impact investing market is estimated at US$1.5 trillion, with Canada’s market at $17.7 billion and growing. Investors are seeing competitive, market-rate financial returns, with some private equity funds matching or outperforming traditional investments.

Product scarcity is a misperception, with a proliferation of new impact products available, while new measurement tools, like GIIN’s IRIS+, are continually being developed and strengthened with more and better data.

We have proof of concept, and many foundations across Canada, the United States and Europe have been investing impactfully for decades.

Nationally, this stretches from smaller community foundations in the Okanagan to private foundations like Inspirit and McConnell. And we’ve only scratched the surface of what’s possible.

A new world order, like Prime Minister Mark Carney outlined in his Davos speech, means that it’s time for change in how endowments are leveraged and how government partners with the philanthropic sector as investors, beyond granting. Impact investing is an effective strategy to open up new ways to fund solutions and new opportunities for governments to mobilize capital.

We must use all the tools in the toolbox to support our neighbours and communities at a time when we need every option on the table.

Rudi Wallace is the president and CEO of Hamilton Community Foundation.

The post Philanthropic capital could do much more to address Canada’s overlapping crises appeared first on Corporate Knights.

We already know the headline facts. The wars in Ukraine and Iran are producing emissions on the order of a mid-sized industrial economy. The scramble for energy and resources helped set the stage, and the destruction of pipelines, depots and power stations has become a recurring spectacle. Analysts have tallied the greenhouse gases, the poisoned soils, the bombed substations and the forests turned to smoke. Less discussed is what this means for the energy transition itself: every tank, missile and drone is built from metals and fuels we also need for wind turbines, batteries and resilient grids.

Every tonne of copper that ends up in shrapnel rather than in wires, every kilogram of lithium that ends up in loitering munitions rather than stationary storage, slows the transition and deepens climate risk for everyone, including the supposed winners. When we choose war, we are not just adding to the climate problem; we are cannibalizing the solution.

Here we face a fork in the road. One path is to treat transition minerals as the new oil: strategic assets to be hoarded, weaponized and fought over. That path is already visible in export controls, trade extortion and a growing list of violent incidents and community protests around mines in the GlobalSouth. The other path is to treat them as a global lifeline for common security, with shared stockpiles, transparent reporting, producer countries as real partners and apolitical norm that the first call on these minerals is decarbonization, not escalation.

Modern warfare also confirms, in the harshest possible way, the old principle that shows up in all the great religious traditions: what you do unto others, you do unto yourself. In a tightly coupled Earth system, the effects of our actions propagate through food webs, supply chains and the atmosphere. When a refinery or gas pipeline explodes, the carbon doesn’t check passports on the way up. When artillery fires shell after shell into fields, the contaminants do not ask permission before entering rivers and crops. Thermobaric weapons suck oxygen from the air and generate firestorms; forests and towns burn, releasing greenhouse gases and black carbon that darken ice and accelerate melting thousands of kilometres away. High-precision missiles and drones can target power plants and transmission lines with uncanny accuracy; the replacement steel and concrete, when they eventually arrive, carry their own enormous carbon price tag. In Ukraine, war-related emissions are now estimated to exceed the emissions from all of the country’s civilian sectors.

And yet, from a certain narrow corner, war looks like a success story. Defence budgets climb; order books for missiles, shells and air defence systems fill; share prices rise. Headlines announce record revenues for the world’s largest arms makers. If your horizon is the next quarter and your constituency is shareholders, war is indeed “good for business.”

Should governments that proudly report power-sector decarbonization be allowed to keep military emissions off the books?

But that business model is parasitic on the larger economy and on the biosphere. War destroys infrastructure, scares off investment, shreds trade links and forces governments to divert money from health, education and decarbonization into replenishing stockpiles and repairing damage. It also burns through critical minerals that the low-carbon economy will need for generations.

Militarization is itself a threat to our security and that leads to some uncomfortable but necessary questions for business and finance. Should climate-aligned investors treat defence exposure as compatible with net-zero strategies, given what we now know about war’s emissions and mineral demands? Should governments that proudly report power-sector decarbonization be allowed to keep military emissions off the books? Should critical-mineral off take agreements be judged only on price and supply security, or also on whether they prioritize uses that reduce net global risk?

My father’s line about there being no winners in war was, in its way, a statement of planetary accounting. In the 21st century, with the atmosphere full and the mineral supply tight, any war anywhere threatens states and markets everywhere, and the thin atmospheric envelope that makes any kind of economy possible at all.

 Ralph Torrie is director of research at Corporate Knights.

The post When we choose war, we cannibalize the solution appeared first on Corporate Knights.

Every shock to global oil markets reverberates here through higher costs, capital outflows and a stark reminder that much of the province’s economy still depends on energy Quebecers do not control.

Yet despite being a major exporter of clean electricity, Quebec still runs an international energy trade deficit of roughly $14 billion each year, which ties consumers and businesses directly to volatile and geopolitically unstable markets.

The old energy paradigm was defined by access to oil. The emerging one will be defined by access to clean, reliable electricity and the ability to deploy it strategically.

– Catherine McKenna and Marine Thomas

This is precisely the vulnerability the clean-energy transition is beginning to resolve. Investment in clean energy reached US$2.3 trillion globally in 2025.

In this context, Quebec stands out. More than 90% of its electricity is renewable: primarily hydroelectric, with growing wind capacity. Forty-two percent of total energy consumption comes from local renewable sources. Few jurisdictions can match this combination of low-carbon, reliable, domestically controlled power.

But advantage is not the same as leadership. Despite its strengths, Quebec is falling behind in the new electric revolution. The share of electricity in its energy mix has been stagnant for 35 years. Oil still accounts for roughly 35% of energy use, with natural gas adding another 17%.

And even with broad consensus across opposition parties, experts, industry and environmental groups, the Quebec government has delayed its emissions-reduction target by five years, pushing it to 2035. Even more concerning, after committing in 2022 to end fossil fuel exploration and production, some politicians are reopening the door to natural gas fracking. This would increase emissions, harm the environment and human health, further expose Quebec to volatile energy prices, and run counter to the economic opportunity of the clean-energy transition.

Quebec should instead invest to fully electrify its economy and lock in its clean-power advantage to deliver real energy autonomy. With clean, affordable electricity that belongs to Quebecers, the province can cut reliance on imported fossil fuels, decarbonize key sectors, grow batteries and green aluminum, and export clean power while generating revenue at home.

At the same time, expanding clean power is not straightforward. Building new hydro and wind capacity will require sustained partnerships with Indigenous Peoples and local communities – not just consultation, but shared ownership and benefits. It will require major investment, faster permitting, new transmission infrastructure and potentially deeper interprovincial collaboration, including offshore wind development in Atlantic Canada linked to Quebec’s grid. These are complex challenges, but they are now the central constraints on growth.

Montreal already offers a glimpse of what a more strategic approach could look like. It is emerging as a hub for climate, technology and finance, with strengths in low-emission aluminum, batteries and electrification, but these pieces are not yet fully aligned.

RELATED STORIES

How transforming Canada’s electricity grid could drive decarbonization, save billions

Trump’s war on wind is pushing investment north to Canada

It’s time to address Canada’s major shortfalls in climate adaptation

The old energy paradigm was defined by access to oil. The emerging one will be defined by access to clean, reliable electricity and the ability to deploy it strategically. Quebec has everything needed to become a global clean-energy superpower.

Recent events in the Middle East are a reminder of the costs of the old system. These include geopolitical shocks, volatile prices and external dependence. The new system offers something different: affordability, stability, sovereignty and enduring economic advantage. But it is also competitive. Jurisdictions that move decisively will capture investment, talent and supply chains. Those that hesitate will import the industries others build.

Quebec is unusually well positioned for this shift. It has abundant renewable electricity, critical minerals and industrial capacity and a strong research ecosystem. What it lacks is not public support or natural advantage, but ambition, strategic clarity and speed.

The window is open. But not for long.

Catherine McKenna is the CEO of Climate and Nature Solutions, the founder of Women Leading on Climate, and a former federal minister of environment and climate change and minister of infrastructure.

Marine Thomas is directrice générale at Partenariat Climate Montréal. 

The post Quebec must move fast to retain its clean-power advantage appeared first on Corporate Knights.