Governments are preparing to absorb a risk that highly profitable oil companies have declined to take. That is not a technical detail of project financing. It is the clearest signal yet of a fraught economic strategy for Canada’s near future – one that puts resource extraction at the centre of national development.

A strategy, not a project

On July 2, the federal government and British Columbia committed billions in public investment to liquefied natural gas development, mining and other extractive industries, and to expanding the Roberts Bank port terminal south of Vancouver, later identified as the marine terminus for the new Alberta pipeline. Later that day, the West Coast line was revealed. The following week, Alberta and Ontario proposed a second pipeline, also without a private proponent and also likely to require substantial public money.

Whether or not that second line is ever built, the sequence confirms that these are not separate infrastructure decisions. They are part of a broader commitment to an extractive economy: the federal Major Projects Office is now fast-tracking 23 “nation-building” initiatives worth well more than $130 billion across liquefied natural gas, nuclear, mining and transportation.

A bet the industry won’t make

Ottawa has formally proposed listing the pipeline as a “project of national interest.” Alberta’s submission puts the cost at $35.2 billion to $43.7 billion, excluding escalation and financing costs, and assuming regulatory savings. It would be built by a new entity jointly owned by Trans Mountain Corporation, Alberta’s Petroleum Marketing Commission and Pembina Pipeline, a Calgary-based company whose non-binding 10% stake is the only private participation. Taxpayers would carry the rest, and there is still no finalized financing plan.

The pipeline is also only part of the public bill. Add the Roberts Bank terminal at roughly $10 billion and the linked carbon-capture project at $16.5 billion officially, and more than $20 billion by recent estimates, and allow for overruns of the kind Trans Mountain produced, and the public commitment could exceed $100 billion – an estimate from market-oriented critics, not climate advocates.

The project includes an Indigenous equity purchase right, to be drawn from the two governments’ shares, but its size and timing remain unspecified. First Nations along the southern route say they were not consulted before the announcement, and 14 First Nations are challenging the fast-tracking law in court.

Canada has been here before: Ottawa acquired the Trans Mountain system in 2018 after private investors stepped back. The expansion ultimately cost about $34 billion, more than six times the original estimate.

The reluctance of industry is not hard to explain. Bitumen is among the highest-cost sources of oil, highly sensitive to price swings and exposed to declining long-term demand as decarbonization accelerates. The International Energy Agency expects global oil demand to peak by 2030, with supply capacity running well above it. With the West Coast line unlikely to be complete before the early-to-mid 2030s, the project risks becoming a stranded asset.

Companies are behaving accordingly. Through the recent price boom, the four largest oil-sands producers cut investment – to $15.9 billion a year across 2021 to 2024, down from $27.9 billion a year in the 2011 to 2014 boom – while sharply increasing dividends and share buybacks. Capital is being returned to shareholders, not committed to new production. If the industry believed in the economics of expansion, it would be leading the investment.

Who this economy is for

Ottawa and Alberta describe the West Coast line as the way to build a strong, prosperous, sovereign Canada. But the record of the last boom complicates these claims.

A report by the Alberta Federation of Labour and Canadians for Tax Fairness found that between 2021 and 2023, the oil and gas industry earned $135.2 billion in operating profits while paying $43 billion in wages – $3.14 in profit for every dollar paid to workers, up from $0.92 in the previous boom. The sector employs roughly 30,000 fewer people than in 2014. And the owners collecting those profits are largely not Canadian. The report estimates that the big four producers are 73% foreign-owned and 60% U.S.-owned, with an estimated $58 billion in dividends and buybacks flowing to foreign owners between 2021 and 2024.

An industry that produces more with fewer workers, invests less, and sends most of its returns abroad is a weak foundation for shared prosperity – and a strange candidate for one of the largest public commitments of the coming decade.

The rollbacks are part of the plan

You might wonder about the environmental safeguards in place, especially as the urgency of climate change is evident all around us. Projects on this scale face barriers under existing environmental rules. So, those rules are being loosened. Canada and Alberta signed a cooperation agreement to streamline and add flexibility to impact assessment; their implementation agreement commits both governments to regulatory frameworks enabling substantial oil-sands growth. The federal government is now proposing faster approvals, expanded pre-designated development zones, and a narrower scope for environmental assessment.

The retreat extends beyond permitting: over the past year, Ottawa has scrapped or weakened the consumer carbon price, the planned oil and gas emissions cap, the electric vehicle mandate, the clean-electricity regulations and the industrial carbon price. Deregulation and environmental rollbacks are not incidental to this strategy. They are what makes it possible – and they build higher emissions into it by design.

The environmental case offered in return is the multibillion-dollar plan to capture and store 16 million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year from the oil sands by 2045. The so-called Pathways project – designed by an alliance of five major oil-sands players – would itself require substantial public funding. Reducing production emissions is worthwhile and should be required of the industry. But about 80% of a barrel’s life-cycle emissions come from burning the fuel, not from producing, refining and transporting it – which is what carbon capture addresses.

Pathways is to capture six million tonnes a year by 2035, while the pipeline is sized to carry a million barrels a day – 365 million barrels a year, or about 157 million tonnes of carbon dioxide when burned. So the “decarbonized oil” the prime minister has invoked would, even if every commitment in the package is met, be oil whose emissions are lower by less than a 10th. In exchange, the companies get a slower rise in carbon-price stringency.

The path not taken

Capital markets respond not only to subsidies but to perceived direction. When governments commit to fossil expansion while delaying climate policy, they signal that Canada’s economic future remains anchored in extraction – shaping where investment flows, which technologies scale and which regions are seen as growth areas while eroding the policy certainty that clean industries need.

The contrast with other jurisdictions is stark. Across Europe, parts of Asia and especially China, governments are pursuing electrification strategies built on renewable energy, grid expansion, electric mobility and low-carbon industry. These are not environmental side projects; they are 21st-century industrial strategies designed to win in a decarbonizing economy. Ottawa’s recently proposed electrification strategy will be credible only if matched by fiscal and regulatory decisions of comparable weight.

Fiscal capacity is finite. Hundreds of billions of dollars committed over the coming decade to extractive infrastructure, nuclear development and military expenditure will press on everything else – healthcare, education, affordable housing, climate adaptation and the care economy, sectors already facing hiring freezes and service reductions even as capital commitments are made elsewhere.

Political capital is finite, too. Aligning closely with the governments of Danielle Smith and Doug Ford eases agreement on these projects while making a different course harder to take later. Pipelines built in the 2030s will still be seeking returns in the 2060s. That is the definition of lock-in, at a time when Canada is already off-track for its climate targets and when extreme heat, wildfire smoke, floods and drought are already damaging health, infrastructure and public finances.

A better bet

Canada does need an ambitious strategy for a low-carbon future – one that diversifies trade, strengthens economic sovereignty and builds at scale. And the same public investment and political capital could go to renewables, a national electricity grid, storage and efficiency, building retrofits, electrified transportation, a circular economy, climate resilience, the care economy and a just transition for the workers and communities that depend on extraction. All this builds value as the world decarbonizes, employs more people per dollar, and cannot be stranded by a shift in global demand.

Before Canada commits another generation of public money to the industries of the last century, governments should be able to explain why this is a better investment in the country’s future than the alternatives competing for the same support. So far, they have not.

Ricardo Grinspun is professor emeritus of economics at York University and a member of Seniors for Climate Action Now!

The post Canada’s new pipelines are a costly bet against the future appeared first on Corporate Knights.

The post Alberta’s revised carbon price offers little incentive to cut pollution appeared first on Corporate Knights.

Driven by aggressive provincial housing mandates, multibillion-dollar federal investments in clean energy and electric vehicle supply chains, and the push to unlock critical minerals in regions like Ontario’s Ring of Fire, we are accelerating infrastructure and resource development at a pace not seen in decades. At the same time, Canada has committed not only to protect nature, but to halt and reverse biodiversity loss by 2030 and put nature on a path to full recovery by 2050.

These goals are typically framed as being in conflict. But the real problem is not the tension between development and nature. It is that we have never built a system that allows them to work together.

Canada’s growth agenda is not optional. Housing shortages, energy systems and major infrastructure projects must move forward quickly. The question is not whether we develop. It is whether we continue to do so in ways that degrade the natural systems our economy depends on, or whether we build a system that allows development and nature to advance together.

The missing piece isn’t capital – it’s architecture

Over the past decade, a familiar argument has taken hold: nature is valuable, essential to the economy and increasingly at risk. The conclusion seems obvious. Capital should flow toward protecting and restoring it.

But it hasn’t, at least not at the scale required.

The reason is not a lack of capital, policy intent or even progress on measurement. It is a lack of architecture. Nature largely remains outside the systems that drive investment decisions. It is measured inconsistently, accounted for incompletely and governed through fragmented, project-by-project processes. The result is predictable: nature remains economically invisible and therefore largely non-investable.

That is now beginning to change.

The economic stakes are enormous. Globally, an estimated $700 billion per year is required by 2030 to halt and reverse biodiversity loss. At the same time, Canadian pension funds and institutional investors manage hundreds of billions in capital seeking long-term, stable returns.

The issue is not capital. It is the absence of structures that allow it to flow into nature.

A convergence of conditions

Canada’s emerging nature strategy signals a structural shift. It positions nature not just as something to protect, but as a foundation of long-term economic prosperity. More importantly, it introduces tools that could fundamentally reshape how development and conservation interact.

One of the most significant is the use of regional assessments under the Impact Assessment Act. This tool is designed to evaluate cumulative environmental, social and economic effects across entire regions, including past, present and future activities.

This is a quiet but profound shift. For decades, environmental decision-making in Canada has been reactive and project-based. Regional assessments are emerging as a mechanism to shift toward proactive, forward-looking land-use planning that can define ecological limits in advance.

They are more than a planning tool. They are the foundation of a functioning nature market.

By defining cumulative impacts, ecological thresholds and development scenarios at a regional scale, regional assessments create the clarity and predictability that capital requires. Without this, nature remains too uncertain to price, too fragmented to manage and, ultimately, too risky to invest in.

If Canada is serious about becoming a nature-positive economy, regional assessments cannot remain occasional exercises. They must be institutionalized, scaled and embedded into how development decisions are made across the country – and quickly.

At the same time, other foundational elements are falling into place. Advances in ecosystem measurement and accounting frameworks are improving how nature is understood and valued. Financial frameworks are beginning to integrate nature-related risks into decision-making. Artificial intelligence, satellite monitoring and environmental data are making it possible to measure and verify ecological outcomes at scale.

Crucially, Indigenous stewardship is emerging as a central pillar of both conservation and economic participation. Large-scale Indigenous Protected and Conserved Areas, such as the Seal River Watershed, demonstrate how Indigenous leadership can secure vast carbon sinks and protect biodiversity at scale. Mature initiatives like British Columbia’s Great Bear Forest Carbon Project show that conservation can also be highly investable, generating long-term revenue streams through verified ecosystem services.

Paired with financial tools such as Indigenous loan-guarantee programs, Indigenous communities are uniquely positioned to become primary suppliers and equity partners in nature-based solutions.

The constraint is no longer the absence of data alone. While important gaps remain, advances in environmental measurement, accounting and monitoring are rapidly reducing this barrier.

Individually, these developments are important. Together, they represent something more: Canada is no longer missing the pieces. It is missing the architecture.

From protection to recovery – and the case for net gain

This shift is reinforced at the global level. Under the Kunming–Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, countries have committed not only to protect nature, but to halt and reverse biodiversity loss by 2030 and restore ecosystem integrity by 2050.

That ambition goes beyond conservation. It implies a transition from minimizing harm to actively restoring nature – from “no net loss” to net gain. Over time, development must not only reduce its impact, but contribute to rebuilding natural systems.

From limits to markets

If regional planning defines ecological limits, it also creates something markets require: certainty.

That certainty can be translated into a simple but powerful mechanism.

When major projects affect ecosystems, they are generally expected to follow the mitigation hierarchy: avoid, minimize, restore and only then offset residual impacts. In practice, however, its application remains uneven and fragmented, limiting its effectiveness as a foundation for consistent, investable outcomes.

What if those residual impacts were consistently quantified and priced? What if developers were required to deliver not just mitigation, but net-positive outcomes?

This is not theoretical. In the United Kingdom, “biodiversity net gain” rules have already created a functioning market that channels private capital into restoration and conservation.

Canada is now in a position to build its own version – potentially more ambitious and more integrated.

A Canadian nature-positive market

At its core, the system would be straightforward:

• Regional plans define ecological limits and priorities. 
• Developers are required to address impacts, with residual effects converted into measurable obligations. 
• Markets allow those obligations to be met through investment in restoration and ecosystem services. 
• Indigenous communities, conservation authorities and landowners become suppliers of nature-based solutions. 

Over time, this could expand beyond biodiversity to include carbon, water, flood mitigation and habitat, creating multiple, stackable revenue streams.

With the right structure, these projects begin to resemble infrastructure investments, with long-term, stable returns tied to measurable ecological outcomes.

Sticks, carrots – and a familiar playbook

For this system to scale, it will require both regulation and incentives – and, crucially, alignment between federal environmental ambition and provincial jurisdiction over natural resources.

In practice, this means a combination of “sticks” and “carrots”: clear ecological limits, mandatory net-gain requirements and enforceable obligations, alongside tax incentives, blended finance and public guarantees that reduce risk and attract capital.

Canada has used this model before. Flow-through shares and public–private structures helped build the oil, gas and mining sectors. The same logic can now be applied to nature.

A nation-building opportunity

This is not environmental policy. It is economic strategy.

Canada has a once-in-a-generation opportunity to move from protecting nature to financing it, embedding natural assets into the same systems that fund roads, energy and housing.

The choice is no longer between development and conservation. It is between continuing with fragmented approaches that fail to scale or building a system where growth and nature are structurally aligned.

The pieces are now on the table. What remains is the architecture.

Peter van Dijk is a former global finance executive, adjunct professor at Brock University, and incoming PhD researcher at the University of Ottawa focusing on nature finance and the economic architecture for a nature-positive future.

The post How to put nature at the centre of investment decisions appeared first on Corporate Knights.

But the hope of federal governments to unlock supposedly sleeping animal spirits is a long-standing one, and the problem has proven resilient. What is required is a break with models whose narrative doesn’t match results and a decision to upset cornerstones of Canada’s economic framework. 

To unlock investment and corresponding productivity gains, the Carney government will need to bring real competition for markets and workers to a corporate sector that has been doing better than ever under the status quo.

Do profits drive investment?

A quick survey of moves by the Carney government on the economic-policy front reveal reforms to the tax system to encourage investment, work to address regulatory barriers across borders and governments, and the spinning up of public-sector funding bodies to complement private-sector investment.

The narrative is that Canada’s productive capacity is held back by taxation that blunts financial rewards, a regulatory system that throws sand in the gears of private enterprise, and a public sector reticent to invest. For taxation in particular, the logic seems clear: why invest if you can’t keep a meaningful portion of the profits? But recent experience at home and abroad suggests that this proposed remedy for unlocking lagging investment and productivity growth comes with a caveat.

If profit and investment move in a pack, Canada should be in the midst of an investment golden age. Changes to the taxation of corporate profits to spur investment – both those enacted in the most recent budget bill and further cuts requested by business groups – come at a time when Canadian corporations have never been more profitable. 

Since 2020, there has been sustained growth in Canadian private-sector profits without a corresponding increase in capital expenditures. Except for oil and gas extraction, sectors that have seen real growth in capital expenditures – mining, utilities, transportation – have experienced relatively flat profits since the pandemic. This suggests that the link between profits and investment is not as clean as initially pitched. Amid an all-time high in macro-level profits, the tax incentives designed to drive investment brought in through Budget 2025, the “productivity super-deduction” and “scientific research and experimental development” tax credit enhancements, might at best change the timing of investment decisions already on the books. 

But recent efforts do not bode well for this strategy. The previous government’s suite of clean-economy tax credits, designed to encourage investment in greener economic activities such as carbon capture, utilization and storage, still a plank of the current government’s approach to climate change, have seen little uptake. As of July 2025, the auditor general of Canada reports that clean-economy credits related to carbon management, hydrogen development and greener manufacturing have seen no uptake. 

A fair response is that these tax credits were misguided in the first place in their attempt to spur investment in sectors where the business case, credit or not, does not exist. But what, then, of more broad-based efforts to use tax reform to spur investment?

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) of 2017 brought in by the Trump administration represented the largest cut to the United States’ corporate tax system in a generation. While the headline figure was the reduction of the federal corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%, the act contained several investment-specific provisions, including a similar super deduction accelerating the expensing of capital investment for businesses. While the uptake of the tax cut has been universal, adding more than a trillion dollars to the United States’ annual deficit, the promised investment gains have been scarce. A 2023 analysis by the think tank American Compass showed that, despite allowing U.S. corporations to keep billions more on the books, the TCJA has had no measurable impact on investment-driven growth. 

What can spur investment?

If at the macro level Canadian corporations are already awash in profits, what can Canadian policymakers do to unlock desired investment and corresponding productivity growth? 

The answer, counterintuitively at a moment when Canadians have never felt less secure of their place in the world, is competition. While a sufficient return is a necessary condition of investment, it is the competitive process that keeps the flywheel in motion. The rivalrous process of competition, being chased by another firm attempting to outdo you and steal share, is what ultimately spurs companies to continue to invest in new and better ways of doing business. 

Studies show that competition is a driver of productivity-enhancing investment, and the relaxing of the competitive constraint is a recipe for complacency. While academics such as Philippe Aghion make the case for a point at which competition is so fierce that it ultimately blunts competition, a market singularly obsessed with beating out the competition to win the business of customers seems like a side effect worth bearing.

RELATED STORIES

The other sovereignty threat

What the new global tax regime means for companies

Cutting red tape won’t defeat Canada’s monopolies. Here’s what will.

In this area, the Carney government has made encouraging moves. Efforts to reduce interprovincial trade barriers can create the conditions for greater competition among Canadian regional businesses and economies. Though rarely framed in these terms, we are exposing our own companies to greater competition. On the sectoral front, Carney is finally set to open up Canada’s infamous banking oligopoly, a move the Trudeau government set in motion.

The most recent spring economic update provided a clue that this thinking might be resonating on a deeper level within the federal government. The headline of “Driving Productivity and Affordability Through Competition” teased a “whole of government” approach to spurring competition that is desperately needed. But, so far, what’s on offer is platitudes about red tape and a promise of future action.

To successfully drive productivity, the government must take an imaginative approach to the project of a more competitive Canadian economy.

Rather than cutting red tape, Ottawa must understand that regulation can be a powerful tool for opening markets for contestation. Long-standing oligopolies must be broken – open if not necessarily up – whether through orders to spin off business lines or regulation that erodes walled gardens. Here, the example of progress on competition in the banking sector is encouraging and cautionary. Encouraging because a growing list of firms angling to break down the gates and cautionary because of the sheer volume of sand incumbents were able to throw in the gears of the modernization of the plumbing of Canada’s banking sector.

The Carney government must also understand an underappreciated vector of driving productivity: competition for Canadian workers. While often framed in terms of vying for market share, competition for inputs is a critical driver of productivity. As the recent oil price shock has shown, make an input more valuable and you increase the incentive to reduce your reliance on it. Paradoxically, competition for Canadian workers must drive wages higher to drive the adoption of the technologies to augment their productivity.

This runs counter to Canada’s pitch as a source of high-quality, low-wage labour for companies both foreign and domestic. While the Temporary Foreign Worker Program has come under scrutiny, just as damaging to our productivity ambitions has been the discounting of our most qualified. By putting high-quality and relatively low-wage employees on offer, Canada has been able to attract businesses willing to set up branches within our borders. While this approach may have generated good jobs and recognizable logos on buildings, it has created a tension between generating the high wages that drive productivity and placating a corporate community dependent on cheap labour. Whatever the mechanism, a tighter labour market with more intense competition for Canadian workers will be key to breaking out of Canada’s persistent productivity slump.

The Carney government faces the unenviable position of breaking out of a secular productivity slump while familiar elements of our traditional economic model break away. Meeting that moment will involve breaking out of the policy responses whose narrative has fallen short of results. Allowing competition to flourish for both markets and workers is the path forward.

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

The post If Carney wants to drive investment in Canada, competition is the way appeared first on Corporate Knights.

Since 1983, Canada has experienced more than 300 catastrophic weather events (extreme weather occurrences causing more than $30 million in insured losses; $25 million prior to 2022). Four decades ago, Canada averaged about two catastrophic events annually; by the mid-2020s, that figure climbed to roughly 15 per year. From 2009 through 2025, insured losses from climate-related disasters jumped to average nearly $3 billion annually versus $400 million to $700 million typically each year from 1983 to 2008.

As disturbing as these figures are, they do not capture the full extent of losses. For every $1 of insured losses, there are usually another $3 to $4 of uninsured costs. Nor do insurance figures convey the lives lost or the full extent of the economic, financial and health impacts of catastrophic weather. The former includes the tragic loss of 619 lives during British Columbia’s heat dome in 2021. The latter includes large gross domestic product and income losses and the much higher government spending that occurs. For example, total economic loss estimates and the large-scale government firefighting and emergency assistance for the widespread Canadian wildfires in 2023 exceed $10 billion.

These and other tragic impacts and escalating costs from extreme weather make greater resiliency through climate adaptation both essential and long overdue.

Yet three major political barriers prevent effective Canadian adaptation from being a key policy goal: lack of understanding, inadequate will and weak policy capacity. The problem of understanding is that adaptation is not seen as core economic and fiscal policy as well as crucial environmental and health policy. The problem of will reflects the longstanding, excessive focus of government on announcing policy versus genuine and practical action, and the dominance of other priorities in the political agenda. The problem of capacity is evident in the modest funding for, and limited in-house expertise of Ottawa and the provinces in, adaptation design and implementation.

Creating a national office for climate adaptation is a critical step toward addressing these deficiencies. A national office would help lessen problems from the lack of understanding and political will. It would provide much-needed analytical and advisory capacity to improve federal policy design and implementation.

1. Lack of political understanding

Climate adaptation and mitigation are both essential

Mitigation means preventing or reducing greenhouse gas emissions that drive climate change. This is an existential Canadian need now and, especially, over the medium to long term. Adaptation refers to protecting or lessening the impacts on people, business and infrastructure from climate change and extreme weather. Adaptation is vital to contain the rising costs and risks of climate change while giving Canada the opportunity to make substantive progress in mitigation.

Effective climate-change policy comprises adaptation and mitigation. It is a false narrative that there is choice between them. Mitigation depends upon adaptation to allow the time for its measures to succeed. Adaptation will not work if climate change is not mitigated. Success depends crucially on both.

Adaptation is a fundamental economic, fiscal and financial requirement

Federal adaptation funding and resources as well as program implementation have been a small fraction of those for mitigation. Leading experts point to the imbalance of “$1 spent on mitigation for every $0.05 spent on adaptation,” or approximately a 20:1 ratio. Adaptation has received too little federal and provincial attention apart from weather disasters. Even then, governments’ focus tends to ebb away quickly once the emergency phase ends.

Ottawa’s funding approach, and that of most provinces, demonstrates a clear lack of understanding that climate adaptation is fundamental economic and fiscal policy. In addition, populist leaders at both levels continue to make deeply flawed arguments such as there being a choice between economic growth and preserving natural assets (e.g., wetlands and forests) that are critical to adaptation and mitigation. They have created and sustained the mistaken view that Canadians cannot afford essential adaptation investments.

Yet the reality is the exact opposite. Wetlands lessen flood damage and risk. Forests sequester carbon and help regulate water flows. Ecosystems help reduce coastal communities’ impacts from storms and erosion. Urban green spaces reduce heat stress and improve public-health outcomes. Moreover, adaptation requires sustaining and enhancing natural (green) infrastructure and improving the resilience of built (grey) infrastructure. Canadian communities, businesses, households and governments depend heavily upon high-quality green and grey infrastructure for their economic, financial and health needs.

Extensive international and Canadian research shows that climate change and catastrophic weather reduce gross domestic product, productivity and incomes. This occurs through multiple channels. Supply is reduced from damage to utility, transportation and communication networks as well as harm to or destruction of commercial buildings and equipment. Extreme heat reduces workers’ cognitive and physical capacity, while heat stress and wildfire smoke increase absenteeism. Lesser income from these supply impacts reduces key sources of demand such as investment and consumption, further decreasing GDP.

Increasing fiscal costs result from surging expenses for emergency assistance and infrastructure repairs and growing need to invest in resilient infrastructure. A 2026 study on proactively upgrading grey infrastructure assets to adapt to extreme rainfall and rising heat estimated that Canada could save up to $9 billion annually in net costs compared to not making these adaptation investments. The savings exceed $4 billion per year relative to a reactive approach, where upgrades are made only at the time of asset replacement.

For businesses, extreme weather means higher insurance premiums plus the costs of immediate repairs, long-term recovery and investment in more resilient offices, factories, warehouses and equipment. Individuals face income disruptions, time away from work and lower personal productivity. Households are confronted by fewer mortgage options in high-risk areas, plus repair and rebuilding costs not covered by insurance.

2. Inadequate political will

Too little long-term thinking and the absence of a systems approach

It is difficult for governments to think long-term when acute crises and large-scale shocks occur, especially when these create a polycrisis whereby multiple, inter-related crises and shocks occur simultaneously. From the pandemic and the surge in inflation and interest rates in the early 2020s to the ongoing geopolitical shocks (as of June 2026) from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, major wars in the Middle East, and structural U.S. disruptions in trade, defence and Canada–U.S. relations, the polycrisis has led to near-term needs dominating government focus.

The polycrisis challenges have meant that long-term thinking and strategy to deal with climate risk – despite its chronic nature becoming devastatingly acute this decade – received far too little attention from Ottawa and the provinces apart from mainly short-term responses to catastrophic weather events.

This insufficient long-term thinking has been compounded by the absence of a systems approach. The lack of systems policymaking was and is evident in the priority of short-term economic (e.g., building housing in high-risk flood areas) and fiscal (e.g., delaying investments in resilient infrastructure) benefits at the expense of higher medium- and long-term costs. It also meant that serious harms to the environment and health of Canadians occurred from the failure to factor the adverse effects on these related systems into policy.

Policy and strategy announcements with very modest follow-through

Over the past 15 years, there have been numerous federal announcements of adaptation programs and initiatives, culminating in the 2023 National Adaptation Strategy. Despite the proliferation of these efforts from 2015 onwards, and various laudable objectives and selected notable content in the NAS, federal spending on adaptation during the Justin Trudeau years was a small fraction of the outlays on mitigation.

Under the Mark Carney government, mitigation remains the main climate-change policy focus, even though overall funding and policy support have fallen compared with the Trudeau era. While the National Adaptation Strategy remains in place, adaptation spending continues to be much lower than on mitigation, accounting for only a small share of climate-related expenditures from 2025 through June 2026. Ottawa’s emphasis has been on carbon capture and electrification to fight climate change and, more recently, a renewed goal of sustaining natural capital, which included citing nature assets’ role in adaptation. For their part, provincial funding and focus continue to be insufficient.

Looking at just local government needs alone, a 2020 analysis determined that municipal infrastructure and other local adaptation requirements were $5.3 billion annually, a figure that would be substantially higher in mid-2026 given inflation over the past six years and the increasing occurrence and impacts of catastrophic weather events. It bears emphasis that this figure does not include the spending and investment needed by firms, homeowners and senior levels of government to achieve more robust adaptation resilience.

3. Lack of policy capacity

Resilience in Ottawa’s nation-building strategy will be crucially dependent on building right the first time. As of June 2026, more than $25 billion in federal capital spending has been announced in defence, housing and other infrastructure. Important additional investments in these areas include multibillion-dollar commitments from the private sector.

Given the scale and pace of these investments, it is imperative that Canadian infrastructure and other economic assets be designed and constructed from the outset to better withstand extreme weather. Resilience needs to be embedded in the design and construction of military installations and other critical infrastructure such as transportation, energy, hospitals, water systems and emergency operations. Greater climate adaptation in new and existing housing is also vital for homeowners and communities alike.

Yet the federal capacity to make policy and to advise and assess these resilience needs is far too disparate, limited and uncoordinated.

Ottawa’s robust strengths in climate forecasting and weather analysis are clear. Significant specific knowledge about natural assets exists in the public sector, including Statistics Canada’s expertise from its Census of Environment efforts and selected staff in leading municipalities such as Calgary and Mississauga that have implemented unaudited disclosures of natural assets on their balance sheets. Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation’s work in housing and climate change resiliency is a notable advantage.

Yet far more capacity is present in the non-profit sector. Examples include the advanced economic analytical and modelling capabilities on climate change impacts in organizations such as the Canadian Climate Institute and the Smart Prosperity Institute. Robust technical abilities in adaptation analysis, practical implementation and related expertise reside in leading national entities like the Intact Centre on Climate Adaptation and the Climate Risk Institute. Various government-funded non-profit regional climate service entities – CLIMAtlantic, Ouranos (in Quebec), the Ontario Resource Centre for Climate Adaptation, ClimateWest in the Prairies, and the Pacific Climate Impacts Consortium in British Columbia and the Yukon – offer local and regional adaptation knowledge and capacity.

The problem is that not enough adaptation intelligence and know-how resides within the federal government – even though it designs national policy and plays a key liaison role with provincial and municipal governments in climate adaptation. Ottawa’s capabilities are neither sufficient nor are they set up to provide sustained analytical and information support, let alone coordination advice, for: the federal policy reset, especially the massive investments in defence, housing, infrastructure and major projects; and for initiatives across two or all three levels of government.

The latter problem is particularly acute for most municipalities, especially small and medium-size local governments, given their constraints in budgets, staff and systems. The adaptation challenge is accelerating faster and in more complex ways than municipalities can handle.

Beyond these absolute needs and problems, the very large disparity in resources, especially staffing versus other federal priorities, stands out. The modest budgets and other resources for federal adaptation policymaking and program design and implementation contrast starkly with the funding and staffing provided to defence, housing and infrastructure. The Major Projects Office and Defence Investment Agency, set up in mid-2025 and early 2026, respectively, illustrate the far greater priority and support federally for these areas.

It is hard to describe federal support in terms of funding and other institutional resources for adaptation other than as decidedly inadequate given the creation of these and other new agencies in the first year of the Carney era, the financing provided to them, and their respective mandates to operate as separate entities from government departments and to hire an array of private-sector expertise to build their “in-house” capacity. 

4. Why a national office helps address these challenges

A national office for climate adaptation would provide Canada with a much-needed policy focal point, bolster federal analytical and information capacity, and create a non-partisan adaptation champion within government. Its ability to hire experts from the non-profit and private sectors should be stressed. The Major Projects Office’s and the Defence Investment Agency’s successes in attracting non-public-sector expertise are notable. Indeed, the scale and scope of these two new entities relative to traditional federal departments merit highlighting even though we are not advocating for similar scope and powers for a national office’s role.

Canada’s adaptation policy needs to have a clear catalyst and robust assessment capacity. A national office for climate adaptation would be a central entity to help address the vast array of design implementation and other construction, equipment and systems requirements for effective climate resilience in defence, housing, infrastructure and major projects. These tasks include building grey infrastructure assets for resilience from the start of their design and construction. In green infrastructure, examples include understanding and applying the lessons from leading countries such as the United Kingdom and the Netherlands in integrating natural capital and ecosystem service information into public policy to boost resiliency and mitigation such as in new infrastructure, land use and housing development.

Lastly, in strongly advocating for a national office for climate adaptation, we want to avoid being overly prescriptive in its specifics. Such detail is beyond the scope of this article, including whether this entity would be a new agency or whether it would report to the Privy Council Office, the Prime Minister’s Office or the minister of the environment, climate change and nature. We also recommend solid links to Public Safety Canada and the Ministry of Finance given adaptation’s importance for both.

The crucial minimum aspects for a national office for climate adaptation are (1) its ability to hire private- and non-profit-sector expertise and (2) a mandate to examine, assess and provide information support on adaptation requirements across applicable federal, provincial and municipal activities.

Conclusion

Extreme weather and climate change continue to be escalating threats in Canada. Major prairie hailstorms; serious flooding in central Ontario, Montreal and the Prairies; and severe wildfires in Western Canada and the Northwest Territories have occurred already in 2026. With El Niño underway, the likelihood of climate extremes globally, rising costs and growing risks for Canada are clear.

In 2015, then Bank of England Governor Mark Carney presciently identified and described the tragedy of the horizon from the severe repercussions of climate change occurring well beyond the short-term focus of political and business cycles, and of technocratic authorities. In 2021, while UN special envoy on climate action and finance, he devoted a whole chapter to “Breaking the Tragedy of the Horizon” in his book Value(s).

The reality with climate adaptation in Canada today is that the tragedy is no longer on the horizon. The tragedy is unfolding now and will be far worse unless an effective national office for climate adaptation is created and soon.

James K. Stewart is an economist, a senior fellow at the C.D. Howe Institute, and a member of the Advisory Committee for the Intact Centre on Climate Adaptation.

Hugh O’Reilly sits on a number of boards including the Rick Hansen Foundation, is a member of the Advisory Committee for the Intact Centre on Climate Adaptation and is the former CEO of a Canadian public sector pension plan. 

The post A national office for climate adaptation in Canada is essential and overdue appeared first on Corporate Knights.

“To see all these young folks from all around the world working together in a shared way, with shared objectives and passion,” he says today, “it really shaped the course of my life.”

Another turning point for Guilbeault unfolded this spring in Ottawa, as the well-known and controversial former environment minister took a bow from federal politics, marking a clear split from the Mark Carney government on environmental and energy policies.

On May 27, Guilbeault, 56, announced his retirement as a member of Parliament, a few months after resigning from Carney’s cabinet. It capped off a heady and influential four years at the helm of one of the most sensitive government portfolios in the country. He served as minister of environment and climate change from 2021 to 2025, with stints as minister of heritage, minister of Canadian identity and culture and minister responsible for official languages before and after.

Upon his announcement, environmental groups heralded his integrity and work, with the David Suzuki Foundation celebrating his “vital contribution to the fight against climate change” and Environmental Defence calling on more MPs to “publicly reject the government’s assault on climate, nature and Canada’s economic and social future.”

“If I had to do it all again, I would,” Guilbeault says of his political career, on a recent morning bike commute from his home in Montreal. “I would fight for the same policies.”

For the first time in recent memory, he has “no plans” – aside from going on a voyage to the Arctic with the non-profit Students on Ice, alongside 40 Canadian youth. He is staying on as MP for a few more weeks to complete projects in his urban Montreal riding of Laurier–Sainte-Marie, such as a youth theatre and a new hub for the 2SLGBTQIA+ community.

“I have greatly enjoyed politics. It’s very demanding,” he says, acknowledging the stark challenges from growing populism, online hate and the harmful effects of social media. “The political arena . . . has become more difficult, but it’s also incredibly rewarding.”

At its annual gala on June 24, 2026, Corporate Knights recognized Guilbeault with its Award of Distinction, an honour that has previously gone to Ken Dryden, Tom Mulcair, Kathy Bardswick and Vicky Sharpe, among others.

Politics with conviction

Guilbeault’s list of achievements is long. Born in rural Quebec, he co-founded Équiterre, an acclaimed Quebec-based non-profit environmental and sustainable agricultural organization in 1993 (originally known as Action for Solidarity, Equality, Environment and Development). He worked as an environmental activist for many years, notably with Greenpeace, and engaged in direct actions designed to strike a nerve and raise awareness. In 2001, he scaled the CN Tower with fellow Greenpeace activist Chris Holden to unfurl a banner that read “Canada and Bush – climate killers” as a way to criticize a lack of government action on the Kyoto Protocol. He was subsequently arrested and convicted of mischief.

It was that brand of conviction that drew the attention of Justin Trudeau, who recruited him to his Liberal ranks. In a recent podcast with political strategist David Herle, Guilbeault described how the then-prime minister introduced his environment minister to former U.S. president Joe Biden – as a “real activist” who had been arrested four times. Trudeau, he said, was looking for someone who would bring a “jolt” to the environment file. And in many ways, that’s what Guilbeault did.

As a Liberal, he has been steadfast in his convictions, defending and expanding the Trudeau policy of carbon pricing, publishing Canada’s Clean Electricity Regulations, draft regulations capping oil and gas pollution, single-use plastic prohibitions, and 2035 emissions targets. He was a leading voice brokering the landmark Kunming-Montreal global biodiversity agreement in which 196 countries agreed to restore at least 30% of degraded terrestrial, inland-water, and coastal and marine ecosystems.

“We’ve shown that using public policy you can have an impact. For the first time in our history, emissions were going down while the economy was going up,” he says.

Navigating criticism

But Guilbeault was a target for the Conservative Party – which linked some of his policies to his “radical” past – and particularly for Canadians furious over carbon pricing. “There are things I would do differently,” he says. “I think we were very slow to respond to the anti-carbon-tax campaign from the Conservatives.”

He also navigated fierce criticism from environmentalists when he approved the Bay du Nord deep-sea offshore oil project off the coast of Newfoundland in 2022, which the government said met strict environmental standards but which environmentalists said exposed “Canada’s climate hypocrisy.” Modelling showed that Canada was making progress but falling short of hitting its 2030 emissions targets while Guilbeault was environment minister, and it has slipped further behind under the current government.

Guilbeault has made no secret of his view that the Carney government is headed in the wrong direction on climate policies. He first resigned from cabinet last year in protest of a memorandum of understanding Carney signed with Alberta that paves the way for a new oil pipeline to the B.C. coast. Environmental groups have criticized the MOU for key concessions to the oil-producing province that lower federal targets for the price on carbon. “We need an effective carbon-pricing system,” Guilbeault says. “With the agreement we’ve signed with Alberta, we’ve just delayed by 10 years the implementation of carbon pricing.”

He understands the pressure of tariffs from the United States and the wider shifting geopolitical landscape, but some fundamentals will not change, he says: “We can try to ignore climate change, [but] climate change won’t ignore us. We’ll likely have the mother of all El Niños coming up in the coming months, wreaking havoc in North America [and] around the world. We’re seeing Pakistan with more than 59°C daytime temperatures.”

Climate change has already displaced tens of thousands of Canadians, he points out – a far greater toll than other geopolitical challenges. “Unfortunately, you don’t hear anyone in the government talk about this.”

He says the tools are in place for better action, such as the national adaptation strategy that maps out what needs to be done for Canadians to be better prepared for climate change. “Where are we with the implementation of that?” he asks.

A ‘radical pragmatist’

Mark Calzavara, a prominent environmental campaigner in Canada, says he understands why Guilbeault decided to quit. The pair have known each other for decades, hatching numerous Greenpeace campaigns, including one that saw Guilbeault climb onto a massive piece of bitumen-refining equipment during a freezing Alberta winter, to stall it from being driven from Edmonton to the oil sands. “Nobody was calling in on our side,” Calzavara recalls of the talk-show interviews Guilbeault did at the time. “They were all ‘I hope you guys get shot, or somebody should take you out.’ Steven was remarkable, under difficult conditions, to talk to people and meet them where they’re at.”

While Guilbeault “did as good or better a job as anyone” as environment minister, Calzavara says that his tenure shows the limits of what is possible within the political system. “The power is so centralized in the prime minister’s office, and if the prime minister is not a fan of the ideas you’re promoting, you go backwards.”

For his part, Guilbeault still holds on to a descriptor offered by a friend many years ago that he is “a radical pragmatist.”

Still, the Conservatives continued their criticism as he exited the political arena. During Guilbeault’s departure announcement in the House of Commons in May, Conservative Calgary MP Shuvaloy Majumdar offered a restrained nod to his “deep convictions” while stressing that “his policies caused so much hardship for so many families across this country.”

Bloc Québécois Patrick Bonin, MP for the riding of Repentigny, called him “by far the best environment minister that this country has ever known” during that same farewell session. And Guilbeault’s friend Elizabeth May, former leader of the Green Party, said it was an honour to work with him. “Courage should be respected, regardless of views,” she said in Parliament, her voice cracking. “What we are dealing with is a crisis.”

Of that, there should be little doubt. But like any effective politician, Guilbeault chooses to focus on the positives and the progress that has been made, and on a record of activism and improbabilities that can inspire hope.

“If [you] told 25-year-old Steven Guilbeault who was at COP1 in Berlin,” he says, having reached his destination and parked his bike, that “one day he would be environment minister of a G7 country, working with others to achieve all those things, I’m not sure he would have believed you.”

Natalie Alcoba is a Buenos Aires-based journalist and senior editor at Corporate Knights.

The post Steven Guilbeault is still fighting appeared first on Corporate Knights.

In her keynote speech at the flagship event, Diana Fox Carney called climate change “the biggest challenge of our lifetime” and said the movement’s task is to convince people “that a more climate-friendly future is not only possible, it’s the one everyone wants” – safer, more inclusive and more just. But subsequent speakers charged that Canada is backsliding on climate performance, weakening standards and putting its own zero-emission targets beyond reach.

Fox Carney is a well-known economist, policy expert and adviser on climate issues to global investors – and her husband is Prime Minister Mark Carney, who has faced criticism from environmental groups on his climate agenda thus far. The former central banker has been a powerful proponent of sustainable finance, but his response to growing global protectionism has been, in part, to unleash Canada’s fossil-fuel industries, roll back emissions caps and support new pipelines.

In her opening remarks, Fox Carney did note that economic concerns such as “security and affordability” have been edging out climate concerns. Nonetheless, she added, “we need a shared sense of purpose around these issues.” Climate champions need to act fast, she said, and offer “solutions that are affordable, practical and able to improve people’s lives now.”

“It’s hard to overthrow legacy systems,” Fox Carney observed. Even so, “the question is not ‘Is change coming?’ The question is ‘Will Canada lead this change?’” she concluded, to loud applause.

Canada’s climate crawl

Rick Smith, president of the Canadian Climate Institute, received even more applause for calling out Canadian complacency. Why, he asked, is Canada ignoring the climate threat? Forget the United Nations’ 1.5°C target for global warming, he said: Canada has already warmed by 2.5°C over previous levels, and the wildfire summers of 2023 and 2025 demonstrated the urgent need to prevent even greater destruction.

Smith noted that only one-third of recent media stories about flooding in Canada refer to the longer-term climate trends. He also challenged the country’s overarching focus on the costs of climate action, rather than the true costs of inaction. In the past decade, forest fires have caused $37 billion in insured damage, two and a half times more than in the previous 10-year period. And uninsured losses, Smith said, are usually double those of insured properties.

Canadians are also falling behind on electric vehicles, Smith said. “Globally, 30% of cars being sold today are EVs. But the story of gasoline-car decline is not something we absorb as Canadians.” In the last quarter of 2025, just 11% of the cars sold in Canada were electric.

Between the past and the future

While Canadians line up at the gas pumps, the electric future is already here. According to Smith, 75% of new demand for electricity last year was met by solar sources. Battery storage in 2025 grew faster than ever. Last year, China exported $22 billion in green and solar technologies.

With the United States’ energy transition struggling under Trump, Canadian innovators have a chance to stand out on world markets. But that advantage may not last long. Smith predicted that a Democratic win in the midterm elections in November will rekindle the U.S. sustainability economy: “The North American focus on climate change is about to kick into gear, again.”

But some speakers pointed out that climate inaction is not an incidental failure of Canadians not paying attention, but a deliberate result of lobbying campaigns run by the resource-extraction industries. “Fossil-fuel disinformation is driving a lot of these rollbacks,” said Laura Tozer, a professor of environmental studies at the University of Toronto. While many other countries are racing ahead on climate issues, she said, in Canada and the United States, “fossil-fuel owners are using these times of turmoil to double down.”

Signs of progress

How to get beyond this impasse? One of the most effective messages came from Joannah Lawson, a principal of the Brian + Joannah Lawson Family Foundation, the platinum sponsor of Toronto Climate Week. A former business consultant, Lawson’s opening remarks offered clarity. Beneath an image of the earth hanging alone in space, she said, “The atmosphere is the only thing keeping us alive.” But now, she says, “we’re putting too much carbon into the atmosphere.”

In response to this crisis, Lawson offered four reasons why she remains hopeful:

1) Climate change is caused by humans, which means humans can also fix it.

2) The transition to clean energy is well underway. (In fact, she said, renewables production has tripled in the last 20 years.)

3) Regenerative agriculture, or holistic farming that focuses on soil health, is a powerful lever to reverse climate change by capturing carbon from the atmosphere.

4) Canada has huge nature resources to preserve – and we’re doing it! Last month, for instance, the Carney government released Canada’s first national strategy for protecting nature, which came with $3.8 billion for conservation and protection.

Transforming climate change from existential crisis to solvable problem could be key to creating consensus and investing in the future. With Canada falling behind, Fox Carney noted, “We must stop arguing amongst ourselves.” The current struggle, she said, “will shape the economic prospects of our country for years to come.”

The post At Toronto Climate Week, experts call out Canada’s climate complacency 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.

“For the first time in our history, every Canadian will hold a direct stake in what’s built,” he said April 27 in launching the fund, which will be known as the Canada Strong Fund. “We will make it easy for individual Canadians to invest in the fund and therefore own a small piece of nation-building projects and share in their returns.”

The idea of a sovereign wealth fund to invest public funds for the public interest is not new, even in Canada. The Heritage Savings Trust Fund operates on this basis in Alberta. The Caisse de dépôt – a public pension fund manager – operates with an economic development mandate in Quebec. Around the world, many governments have established national wealth funds, sometimes investing enormous surplus revenues from their oil and gas assets.

The distinguishing feature of the new Canadian fund is its individual investment mandate. The government is promising to create a retail product to support the fund, which it says will be widely available to average investors.

Green investors beware

On paper, the product sounds like it could be a hit, harkening back to the Canada Savings Bonds that were enormously popular with individual Canadians in the 1960s and 1970s as a way of earning decent returns while supporting the national interest.

The government said projects will be selected from the government’s Major Projects Office and other national-interest projects. The list will likely include port expansions, electric grid improvements, clean-energy facilities and public transit projects, which will have broad support. But the list could also include a whole host of controversial fossil fuel ventures, including liquefied natural gas terminals, pipelines and carbon capture projects, limiting the fund’s appeal.

RELATED STORIES

Can Ottawa convince Canada’s pension giants to invest at home?

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

Canada’s biggest sustainable forest label has a clear-cutting problem 

Tim Nash, president of Good Investing, a consulting firm that works with individual investors to create sustainable investment plans, says there won’t be much demand for the fund from green investors, who will be put off by its fossil fuel investments. But it could be very popular among investors who are concerned about Canada’s independence and want to support the country’s long-term development and economic security.

“The exciting thing for me is that Mark Carney talked explicitly about a retail offering, which to me is phenomenal,” Nash says. “I think this is targeted at a wider swath of Canadians who are really interested in Canadian sovereignty.”

A door to more?

According to the government’s spring economic statement, the product will be easy to purchase, hold and transact, and will provide investors with protection for their initial capital. The fund will be an independent Crown corporation, professionally managed and operating on an arm’s-length basis from the federal government, investing in national projects on a fully commercial basis.

This is good politics, this is good economics. Across the board, we need a retail offering. I think there’s going to be a lot of energy around this.

– Tim Nash, president, Good Investing

Initial seed capital for the fund will come from a three-year, $25-billion commitment from the federal government. Carney said he expects the fund to grow over time as investments are sold and capital is reinvested.

Nash says he hopes the fund will inspire other retail investment products with government support. An investment product based on the Canada Growth Fund – similar to the Canada Strong Fund but with a clearer cleantech focus – would be very attractive to green and conventional investors, he says. Similarly, he says a Canada green bond widely available to individual investors would have strong demand.

Many questions remain

The background materials provided by the government are light on details, and a consultation is now proposed to iron out the many remaining questions. It’s not clear how the investment product will be structured, or whether it will be available through bank branches, financial advisers or directly from the government. It’s also not known how the principal investment guarantee will work or how much access investors will have to their funds given the long-term nature of the underlying investments.

Nash also says a top question is whether the fund will be eligible for tax-advantaged accounts, such as registered retirement savings plans. He calls this an absolute necessity to avoid the modest returns from the fund being depleted by income taxes.

If the government can get the basics right, however, Nash says, it could be very popular and replicated across other government programs to help bolster private investment. He says investment offerings in public programs could help to create popular support for them by giving people a direct stake in their success.

“This is good politics, this is good economics,” he says. “Across the board, we need a retail offering. I think there’s going to be a lot of energy around this.”

Eugene Ellmen writes on sustainable business and finance. He is a former executive director of the Canadian Social Investment Organization (now the Responsible Investment Association).

The post Mark Carney’s ‘people’s fund’ puts small investors on the front lines of economic defence appeared first on Corporate Knights.

“With this new partnership, we will not stop until the goals of Atmanirbhar Bharat and Canada Strong are reached,” Carney said, citing the Hindi term for “self-reliant India.”

The agreement will see Saskatoon-based Camemco deliver nearly 22 million pounds of uranium fuel between 2027 and 2035, CBC reports. India currently has 25 nuclear reactors in operation, eight under construction, and plans to boost its nuclear capacity from 8.7 to 100 gigawatts by 2047, the national broadcaster adds.

A wide-ranging joint statement issued by Carney’s office also puts liquefied natural gas (LNG), liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), crude oil and refined petroleum products at the centre of the expanded trade relationship.

Carney “framed this new course as not just a return to how things were but rather an ambitious revisioning of what the two Commonwealth countries can do together in an uncertain era marked by instability,” CBC writes. Just prior to his meeting with Modi, Carney said he hoped to secure a wider free trade agreement with India by the end of the year, possibly in time for a signing at this year’s G20 summit at a Trump property in Miami. The two leaders affirmed that timing after their one-on-one.

“With India positioned to be the largest contributor to incremental global energy demand growth over the next two decades, beyond its current position as the world’s third-largest oil consumer and fourth-largest LNG importer, both sides acknowledged the significant potential to further expand bilateral energy trade,” the joint statement declares. “This includes increased oil and LNG imports by India from Canada, as well as the supply of refined petroleum products from India to Canada. In this context, Canada reaffirmed its plans to expand heavy oil export infrastructure and supplies of LNG to the Indo-Pacific market through Canada’s stated goal of producing 50 million tonnes of LNG per year by 2030 and up to 100 million tonnes by 2040.”

The statement calls for broader cooperation “across clean energy and climate-related value chains, including renewable energy, hydrogen and its derivatives, biofuels, sustainable aviation fuel, battery storage, and electricity systems modernization, recognizing the central role of these sectors in advancing shared climate objectives and energy transition goals.” It says the two leaders also “underscored solutions for carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS) as a key area of cooperation, offering a significant opportunity for the sustainable production of energy and critical minerals.”

And it celebrates a “comprehensive institutional framework to advance bilateral collaboration across solar, wind, bioenergy, small hydro, energy storage, and capacity-building” while recognizing India’s “leadership and capacity in large-scale solar and grid-level energy storage technologies along with scalable models in rooftop solar and other forms of distributed renewable energy solutions.”

CBC has a list of smaller deals that were announced or re-announced this week, including a 1.2-million-tonne coal export contract for British Columbia–based Elk Valley Resources, valued in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Canada will also join the 112-member International Solar Alliance, first conceived by India in 2015 and launched by India and France in 2017.

News coverage of the announcement has focused extensively on the warming of relations after the former Justin Trudeau government concluded and the Modi government denied that India had conducted foreign interference in Canada. “Touting an approach he calls ‘values-based realism,’” The Globe and Mail writes, Carney “has largely sidestepped questions over meddling by New Delhi in Canada, including the allegations it was behind the 2023 murder of a Canadian Sikh activist. Last year, a public inquiry report flagged India as the ‘second most active country engaging in electoral foreign interference in Canada’ after China.”

“But, with Carney at the helm, the relationship has become friendlier with much more diplomatic dialogue – with even more to come after the prime minister invited Modi to visit Canada sometime soon,” CBC reports.

Uranium sale has ‘implications’

Just ahead of Carney’s visit, India’s high commissioner to Canada, Dinesh Patnaik, said the country would be open to buying Canadian nuclear technology or taking an ownership stake in the country’s uranium mines. “We are willing to take whatever,” he told CBC. “Nuclear is a huge field in which we want to work together.”

The Canadian Press says Saskatchewan is the only province that exports uranium. And in New Delhi Monday, Premier Scott Moe declared it a “great day” for his province. “Saskatchewan’s always a big winner when it comes to export deals,” he said. “Saskatchewan will certainly benefit from the agreement signed today, but all Canadians benefit as well. I think that’s important for us to remember.”

In a Globe and Mail opinion piece in December, Gordon Edwards, president of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility, and Erika Simpson, president of the Canadian Peace Research Association, raised the prospect that the uranium deal – then valued at $3.94 billion – would make it easier for India to divert some of its existing nuclear fuel stockpile for military use.

“India is not a routine customer,” they wrote. “It is a nuclear-armed state that has never signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the agreement meant to anchor global efforts against the spread of nuclear weapons. In selling it uranium, Canada appears willing to extend to India the kinds of benefits normally reserved for states that accept international inspections on all nuclear facilities and abide by NPT treaty obligations.”

With “one of the world’s largest stockpiles of civilian plutonium, separated from spent reactor fuel,” India could already produce as many as 2,686 nuclear weapons if it chose to redesignate the material for military use, Edwards and Simpson say. “Doing so would require only a political decision. The risk is not hypothetical. It sits just outside the boundaries of our public policy discussion.”

Mitchell Beer is publisher of The Energy Mix, a non-profit community news site and e-digest on climate change, energy and the shift off carbon. This article first appeared on The Energy Mix. It has been edited to conform with Corporate Knights style. Read the original article here.

The post Trade between Canada and India set to double as energy takes centre stage appeared first on Corporate Knights.