If we don’t get to a much stronger place soon, we may cease to be a nation-state at all.

We’ve long been aware of the risks of the elephant next door. We have risen to the challenge when called for, before and after Confederation. 

When the United States invaded Upper Canada in 1812, under the leadership of British Major-General Robert Ross, we literally ate their dinner (President Madison fled, leaving an untouched feast) and burned the White House down.

The boldest play we can make is to forge a soup-to-nuts clean energy superpower, from critical minerals and batteries to smart grids, financial wizardry and engineering know-how.

After Confederation, to unite Canada and thwart U.S. expansionism, Sir John A. Macdonald, along with a team of builders and financial wizards, led the most consequential nation-building project in our history, pounding in the last spike of the 4,700-kilometre Canadian Pacific Railway in 1885.

The elephant and the polar bear

Here we are in 2025 with the elephant trumpeting again. Trudeau Sr. likened us to a mouse in this dynamic, but by relative weight – and I hope attitude – we are more of a polar bear. What would a polar bear do? According to Inuit lore, polar bears are seen as powerful spiritual beings embodying strength, resilience and adaptability. A polar bear knows the full meaning of “We the North,” and a polar bear never rolls over (unless it’s playing or cleaning itself). 

How do we build a stronger Canada? It starts with a stronger economy.

We can take inspiration from some of our winter sport heroes. We need to “skate to where the puck is going.” That means investing where fortunes are rising, not falling. With apologies to Harold Innis, the famed political economist, hewing wood and drawing water (and, soon, drilling for oil ) is not where the money is. The clean energy economy is the locomotive for 21st-century growth. As measured by Corporate Knights and others, it is growing twice as fast as the rest of the economy and is now the dominant driver of economic growth across sectors and the world. 

The boldest play we can make is to forge a soup-to-nuts clean energy superpower, from critical minerals and batteries to smart grids, financial wizardry and engineering know-how. 

We have all the ingredients to do this. The only thing missing is leadership.

We have a need for speed

It’s one thing to say we are going to be a clean energy superpower; it’s quite another to make it happen. The goons from the status quo industries have been going into the corner and coming out with the puck for a long time: case in point, 10 years after Trudeau was elected on a promise to price pollution, the biggest oil companies are still polluting for free. That’s why we need to keep our elbows up, to make sure we don’t lose the puck.

Markets and geopolitics are moving too fast for us to go slow. No time for Royal commissions or expert panels. We have a need for speed. Like the masters of metamorphosis featured on p. 32, we need to dare to push the limits of what is possible, faster than we have ever gone before. 

In the spirit of friendlier times with our neighbour, we can take a page out of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s first 100 days, where he passed 15 major bills and delinked the dollar from the gold standard, laying the way for major public investments (in the order of 6% of GDP for six years) that saved the United States from the Depression. 

Let us hope the next leader of our land brings the resilient spirit of a polar bear, the vision of the Great One (on the ice, not off), the sharp elbows of Mr. Hockey and the daring speed of the Crazy Canucks. Mix all that with a little financial wizardry, and we will make magic happen.

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

The post Publisher’s Note: Canada’s next leader must skate to where the puck is going appeared first on Corporate Knights.

But Pierre Poilievre’s commanding majority in the polls evaporated when Donald Trump began threatening Canada’s sovereignty through trade sanctions. The Liberal Party saw a dramatic reversal of fortunes after Justin Trudeau resigned and was replaced by Mark Carney, a high-profile former investment banker who served as governor of the Bank of England during Brexit, and ran the Bank of Canada before that.

While Conservative voters see Carney as a likely continuation of what they regard as Trudeau’s profligacy, for Liberal voters the new leader represents a deft hand at the wheel and the possibility of responsible prosperity.

As a United Nations special envoy on climate action and finance, Carney was a key architect of the global framework for sustainable finance that has underpinned much of the progress in the energy transition since 2020. “Private value can be put in the service of public values,” he said at the Sustainable Finance Forum in Ottawa last November.

But times are changing fast, and even since he made those statements the situation for sustainable finance has deteriorated, with several climate-aligned financial networks – which Carney helped facilitate – unravelling in recent months. And with all the economic uncertainty and political instability, climate change has ceased to be a deciding issue for Canadians. Since the last election, the environment has slid from first to seventh place on a Vote Compass poll of top concerns for voters.

Even so, many of the key issues in the election carry major implications for Canada’s contribution to fighting climate change, as well as the country’s ability to navigate the energy transition and the impacts of a warming planet.

Comparing Liberal and Conservative energy policies

Carney acted quickly when he became prime minister to kill the consumer portion of the carbon tax and thereby remove the most contentious element of the Liberal government’s climate policy. In doing so, he undercut a key election promise by Poilievre, who campaigned long before the election call that he would “axe the tax.”

Poilievre is now taking aim at the industrial portion of the federal tax that applies to large emitters, although most provinces administered their own industrial carbon tax under federal standards. He has promised to kill the Liberal proposal to impose greenhouse gas emission caps on oil and gas facilities and to support Alberta’s plan to double crude production by building pipelines and export terminals for liquefied natural gas.

Poilievre says he would create “energy corridors” through which pipelines and transmission lines could be built quickly. He also says he would overhaul the federal Impact Assessment Act to ensure that resource projects are quickly approved. But he has offered little in terms of support for transitioning the Canadian economy away from dependence on fossil fuels to more reliance on renewable, nuclear and other low-emission sources.

Carney’s support for the oil and gas sector is tied to his belief that investing in decarbonization technologies like carbon capture is essential to reaching net-zero. “We should run towards that, because that is, in the end, where we can have the biggest impact on the climate,” he said at the Ottawa forum.

The New Democratic Party supports the industrial carbon price and would add a measure to help the competitiveness of Canadian industry: a carbon border-adjustment levy that would tax imports from countries that don’t have comparable carbon pricing.

The Green Party, for its part, says it would halt all new fossil fuel projects by 2045 and would stop government subsidies for oil and gas companies, investing instead in renewable energy. 

A momentary opening for fossil fuel infrastructure 

Carney came to the Liberal leadership with a strong record on climate change. As governor of the Bank of England, he led international efforts to require financial institutions to account for climate-related financial risks. He also served as an adviser on climate-related finance to the UN secretary-general in the lead-up to the Glasgow conference in 2021.

His election platform calls for Canada to become “the world’s leading energy superpower, in both clean and conventional energy.” That means more oil and gas infrastructure like pipelines and liquefied natural gas terminals, although Carney remains committed to the oil-and-gas emissions cap that would require the industry to sharply reduce emissions even as they aim to grow production.

 “In a world of declining fossil fuel consumption, Canada seems more likely to be among the earliest producers to fall than among the last standing.”

– Mark Winfield, professor of environmental and urban change, York University

Carney, too, would establish energy corridors, though he emphasizes the opportunity to build clean energy infrastructure, including interprovincial transmission. He would finalize clean energy tax credits and support spending on both natural carbon sinks and carbon capture projects.

Do Canadians really want more pipelines?

In a survey sent to subscribers of the Corporate Knights newsletter, respondents endorsed plans to reduce reliance on fossil fuels and speed up the transition to a clean energy economy.

In response to a question that garnered 385 responses, 52.5% said Ottawa should not offer incentives for new oil and gas pipelines or terminals because the environmental costs are too high. Only 17.7% offered unqualified support for such incentives, while 20.8% said yes if the Canadian resources would displace the use of coal overseas.

“Do not fall back on old habits,” one respondent wrote. “Pipelines are not the way to make Canadians richer.”

Respondents also supported federal efforts to drive the clean energy transition. Some 67% said the federal government should aggressively drive the adoption of green energy through regulations and incentives, “even if it means some higher consumer prices.” As well, 24% endorsed the federal role but only if it could avoid higher prices.

“Climate change is here and it’s hurting everyone and we need more than lip service paid to it,” another respondent wrote.

A wrong turn for Canada’s economic interests

Looking beyond the current crisis, some experts suggest that betting on fossil fuels is likely to backfire, not just in environmental, social and political terms, but also for the Canadian economy. “In a world of declining fossil fuel consumption, Canada – increasingly reliant on high-cost and high-carbon production like oilsands crude and fracked and liquified natural gas – seems more likely to be among the earliest producers to fall than among the last standing,” writes Mark Winfield, a professor of environmental and urban change at York University.

While the dramatic political changes in the United States seem to have created a renewed social licence for oil and gas infrastructure, many suggest that the real opportunity points in another direction: toward greater investment in renewables. “With the U.S. retreating from Biden-era climate action and Europe facing competing economic and security pressures, Canada might find an opportunity to position itself as a stable, climate-aligned investment destination,” writes Baltej Sidhu, an analyst at the National Bank of Canada and a specialist in sustainability and energy transition.

Research by the London Stock Exchange Group last summer found that, taken as a whole over the past decade, companies whose revenues come from reducing carbon emissions offered better returns than every other sector except tech.

Carney acknowledged the reality of renewable-energy dominance at the Ottawa conference in November: “Investment in clean energy is now more than twice the investment in conventional energy, but it needs to double again,” he told attendees. “In Canada, we will need to invest somewhere between $125 and $140 billion annually in this transition.”

What the two main parties are pitching for Canada’s industrial sector

Donald Trump’s erratic trade policies have also turned the election into a contest over who has the best plan to save Canada’s industries and put the country on a new international footing for trade. This spring, the U.S. president imposed 25% tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum. Weeks later, he slapped 25% tariffs on cars, targeting an industry that supports more than 500,000 Canadian jobs.

As well as shaking up the federal election campaign, these tariffs are creating anxiety in steel-, aluminum- and auto-manufacturing communities in Ontario and Quebec. The tariffs are throwing thousands of jobs into jeopardy, while also threatening Ontario’s transition to electric vehicle production and green steel, and growth in low-CO2 aluminum in Quebec.

“Businesses have stopped their expansion plans or delayed them because of the uncertainty, because they don’t know what tomorrow looks like,” says Greg Dunnett, CEO of the Chamber of Commerce in the steel centre of Hamilton.

RELATED

Mark Carney’s net-zero banking alliance backtracks on compulsory climate targets

How Canada’s political parties are navigating a public rift on climate

Pierre Poilievre voted against the environment nearly 400 times

In response, the Liberals imposed 25% counter-tariffs on U.S. steel, aluminum and cars. Long-term, the Liberal platform includes $2 billion for the auto industry to build “a fortified Canadian supply chain,” boosting competitiveness, protecting employment and advancing job training.

Carney has also said he would continue the current industrial carbon-pricing system in cooperation with the provinces, a policy that Poilievre has vowed to revoke. This is of key importance in Hamilton, where a proposed $2-billion decarbonization project at ArcelorMittal Dofasco is on hold until after the election. Industrial carbon pricing and federal-provincial subsidies are critical in making the project viable.

Poilievre has said he would continue the counter-tariffs until U.S. tariffs are removed and use the proceeds for tax relief and worker support. Poilievre has also promised to cut the GST on new Canadian-made cars and provide loans and tax credits for affected businesses.

There have been an estimated 6,000 temporary layoffs in the auto sector since the tariffs went into effect. But Flavio Volpe, president of the Canadian Automotive Parts Manufacturers’ Association, says there could be many more layoffs if Trump follows through with a threat next month to impose tariffs on auto parts, not just fully assembled cars. “The industry is headed for major operational shutdowns, stranding workers, suppliers and automakers across the continent,” he says.

Making the most of Canada’s critical minerals

Canada’s critical minerals have never been so coveted, thanks partly to Trump. In a hot-mic moment, weeks before he stepped down as prime minister, Justin Trudeau told a Canada-U.S. business summit that Trump’s threat of making Canada the 51st state was connected to the country’s plethora of critical minerals.

Carney is promising to invest in critical minerals by creating a “First and Last Mile Fund” to directly support clean-energy and critical-minerals projects as well as accelerate exploration and extraction from recycling. The party also proposes to attract, expand and de-risk investment in critical mineral exploration and extraction with additional investments in and expansion of existing tax credits.

Carney’s platform includes a “One Project, One Review” policy, which involves setting up what it would call a Major Federal Project Office with a new mandate to issue decisions on major projects within two years instead of five, while “fully upholding environmental integrity and Indigenous rights.”

Meanwhile, Poilievre proposes a “One and Done” rule for resource projects. He says he’ll set up a so-called Rapid Resource Project Office to handle all regulatory approvals across all levels of government and says there will be one application and one environmental review per project to speed up the approval process while “ensuring efficiency without sacrificing environmental standards.”

The Conservatives are also vowing a one-year maximum wait time for project approvals, with a target of six months “giving businesses certainty, cutting delays, and getting shovels in the ground faster.”

Canada’s mining industry, which has been pleading for this kind of attention for years, stands to gain no matter which party winds up in power. Other sectors tied to the energy transition may not be so lucky.

The post Climate takes a back seat, but the energy transition looms large over Canada’s election appeared first on Corporate Knights.

The current iteration of Canada’s consumer carbon rebate is dead – which many view as a casualty of effective communication – yet climate policy remains a pressing topic for voters and a major battleground for political leaders.

As Canada grapples with intensifying climate-related challenges, the next government will need to not only implement evidence-based policies to meet international climate commitments, but also effectively communicate its vision to voters.

The public remains concerned about environmental issues, yet many are worried that bold climate policies have damaged the economy. This tension between environmental responsibility and economic growth will shape how each party formulates and communicates their climate policies in the upcoming campaign.

The Liberals pitch more carrots, fewer sticks

For Carney and the Liberal Party, the challenge is twofold. First, the Liberals must present a new climate plan after the collapse of the consumer carbon rebate, which has faced widespread public opposition in recent years.

While the new Liberal leader has already terminated the carbon rebate, it still remains unclear what his comprehensive climate plan will look like. Carney’s website states that his strategy will “Provide incentives for consumers. Put more of the burden on big polluters. And help us build the strongest economy in the G7.”

This suggests his climate policy will hinge more on positive incentives for consumers to invest in sustainable approaches rather than putting a cost on polluting.

While the carbon rebate initially enjoyed broad support as a key tool for reducing emissions, it has become a lightning rod for political controversy.

Climate change is no longer just an environmental issue – it’s increasingly seen as a matter of economic survival, with green energy jobs and clean technologies representing an opportunity for Canada to position itself as a global leader in the sector.

Carney will have to make a convincing case that his policy will create jobs, stimulate innovation and provide a clear path toward a greener, more sustainable economy. Failing to do so could lead to the loss of centrist and moderate voters, some of whom are wary of the perceived economic risks of aggressive climate action.

The Conservatives can’t ignore their own environmental wing

On the opposite end of the political spectrum, federal Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has made axing the carbon rebate a central part of his platform. Framing the carbon rebate as an economic penalty, Poilievre has played into populist sentiments by promising to “axe the tax” and relieve financial pressures on Canadian families and businesses.

RELATED

Are we talking about carbon all wrong?

The war of words over climate change

Alberta’s conservative party invites climate disinformation into policy debate

However, even if the Conservatives are successful in eliminating the carbon rebate, they still face the challenge of needing a comprehensive climate policy that lowers emissions and meets Canada’s Paris Agreement targets. Poilievre has said he would not withdraw Canada from the accord, but he hasn’t addressed how he would meet Canada’s commitments.

Poilievre’s populist rhetoric may resonate with voters who feel economically squeezed, but it’s unlikely to be enough to win over voters concerned about the climate crisis – especially as he has voted against environmental and climate action in Parliament more than 400 times in his career, a point his opponents will be sure to raise repeatedly.

For the Conservatives, the real challenge will be how to present a climate policy that appeals to both economic conservatives, who prioritize fiscal responsibility, and environmental conservatives, who are concerned about the future of the planet.

Poilievre will need to clearly articulate how his policies will preserve Canada’s environmental future without stifling economic growth or inflating costs for the average Canadian.

The NDP and Greens have yet to take a clear stance

A key piece of the future of climate policy in Canada will be the NDP and the Green Party, who are generally considered left-of-centre parties alongside the governing Liberals.

The NDP, which can siphon progressive votes away from the Liberals – sometimes benefitting Conservatives – have been clear as mud when it comes to their climate policy for the next election. NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh rescinded his party’s long-standing support for the Liberal carbon rebate in April 2024 but has not yet said what his party would put in its place.

Meanwhile, the Green Party, which has historically played a less significant role in electoral outcomes in terms of vote splitting, has generally maintained its support for the carbon rebate. Its website suggests the party supports the polluter-pays principle.

However, the Greens have yet to take a clear stance on the shifting climate grounds on which this election could partially be fought.

Better messaging will make the difference for climate policy

In the coming years, the future of climate policy in Canada will be less about crafting the perfect policy and more about crafting a message that addresses how people are feeling.

The Liberal Party has been open about the demise of the carbon rebate being a combination of a lack of their own effective communication strategy mixed with harmful disinformation campaigns that led to the undoing of their signature climate policy.

For the Liberals, Conservatives, NDP and Greens alike, the road to effective climate policy will lie in this communication. Political leaders will need to balance ambition and pragmatism, ensuring that their policies align with Canadians’ economic interests.

With 71% of Canadians suggesting they want the next government to do more to address climate change, leaders who can articulate a vision for a sustainable, prosperous future while addressing the immediate concerns of Canadians will be the ones who have the best chance of winning the public’s trust – and the next election.

Andrew Heffernan is a climate associate at the Information Integrity Lab and adjunct professor in political studies at L’Université d’Ottawa/University of Ottawa.

This story first appeared in The Conversation Canada. It has been edited to conform with Corporate Knights style. Read the original article here. 

The post How Canada’s political parties are navigating a public rift on climate appeared first on Corporate Knights.

With a headlining address from President Javier Milei, the new darling of the global far right, and, reportedly, Donald Trump’s “favourite president,” it also exposed a particular facet of libertarianism in the South American nation: very young, and very male.

Milei catapulted to fame and into the presidential office of the second-largest economy in the region last year on the shoulders of a youthful voting block. Young men, who had spent years consuming clips of his televised tirades on the internet, became envoys for his message, helping convert their family members into supporters. Proportionally speaking, they dominated the conference room at the Buenos Aires Hilton that hosted CPAC, in a sea of blue suits and, in some cases, red ties and red Make America Great Again caps, in a nod to Trump.

The gathering offers a window into the increasingly hostile rhetoric that is quickly spreading around the world, with the help of organizations like CPAC. The Argentina event included right-wing and libertarian speakers from across Latin America, as well as members of Spain’s far-right Vox party, representatives from Hungary’s nationalist government, and the son of former right-wing Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, who is currently indicted in his country for his alleged role in a coup plot.

“It is not enough to organize politically,” Milei said during his speech. “It is also necessary to fight a cultural battle, and in that CPAC has a fundamental role, and that is what will help us to coordinate internationally so that the leftists do not get in anywhere.”

For Milei, that cultural battle extends from feminists to climate change activists. In a bold move last month, he pulled Argentina from the COP29 climate summit in Azerbaijan, and then announced that his government was reviewing its place in the Paris Agreement climate accord.

Milei has previously called the climate crisis a “socialist lie,” and since taking office he has shuttered the Ministry of the Environment, among eight other ministries; established new incentives for oil and gas projects; and set his sights on rolling back protections for forests and glaciers.

He has lived up to his campaign promise of taking a chainsaw to the state, cutting expenditures in real terms by almost a third, firing tens of thousands of public employees, cutting subsidies on everything from transit to utilities, and undertaking a major campaign of deregulation.

“We in America look to Argentina to see what we can accomplish,” said Kari Lake, a former TV news anchor turned Republican politician, who spoke at the conference. As far as the Trump administration is concerned, Milei’s radical prescriptions offer a road map, in particular when it comes to slashing government spending. Tech billionaire Elon Musk, a boisterous cheerleader for Milei, now heads up Trump’s planned Department of Government Efficiency alongside pharmaceutical billionaire Vivek Ramaswamy, who wrote on X that what the United States needs is “Milei style cuts, on steroids.”

Conference attendees seemed giddy at the prospect of a new alliance. “We must stand together, establishing channels of cooperation throughout the world,” Milei said to a cheering audience. “We could call ourselves an international right wing, a network of mutual assistance made up of all those interested in spreading the ideas of freedom around the world.”

The post America’s far-right movement finds a warm welcome in Argentina appeared first on Corporate Knights.

It illustrates how far companies will go to influence elected officials. Politicians have elections to worry about, giving them a general motivation to avoid moves that will be unpopular. In fact, one survey found that congressional representatives rated “staying in touch with constituents” as the most important aspect of their jobs. But behind the scenes, there’s a very meta struggle to sway what politicians perceive as popular opinion.

“What really matters, in some ways, is not objectively what the public thinks, but it’s what decision-makers think the public thinks,” said Matto Mildenberger, a political science professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Across the board, politicians tend to think climate action is much less popular than it really is. The latest example comes from a new study, published in the journal Nature Energy earlier this month, finding that local elected officials in Pennsylvania underestimated support among their constituents for large solar projects. Based on survey responses from nearly 900 residents and more than 200 policymakers, researchers found that Pennsylvanians liked solar projects 7 percentage points more than natural gas ones. Local officials, however, misperceived that preference, thinking natural gas, which is primarily composed of the potent greenhouse gas methane, would be more popular.

Since local officials have a lot of sway over what energy projects get approved, this misperception could translate to less clean energy projects getting built, slowing the transition away from fossil fuels. Pennsylvania has been identified as the state with the fifth-most solar capacity by 2050, according to Princeton’s modeling for how the country could reach net-zero emissions. “In the vast majority of the U.S., the actual ‘Is this project going to be built or not?’ is decided at the local level,” said Holly Caggiano, a co-author of the study and a professor of climate justice and environmental planning at the University of British Columbia in Canada.

Misunderstanding what Americans believe about climate change could be slowing climate action at the national level, too. A study in 2019, co-authored by Mildenberger, showed that congressional staffers underestimated the popularity of putting restrictions on carbon emissions in their local districts. The same bias was true of elected officials at the state level, according to his research. “We should absolutely believe that those perceptions are limiting the ambition of climate and energy policy,” Mildenberger said. “It is one factor among many that makes solving the climate crisis harder.”

It’s not just politicians who hold a distorted view: People systematically underestimate public support for climate policies. A study from 2022 found that Americans imagined only a minority of their fellow citizens supported a carbon tax or a Green New Deal, when it was actually an overwhelming majority — meaning that actual support for climate policies was almost double what they thought.

Part of the problem is that people who support renewable energy or climate policies don’t usually talk about it much, giving everyone else a distorted impression about how popular, or unpopular, those beliefs really are. “Often, opponents to projects are very, very loud,” Caggiano said. In addition, media coverage may give unpopular opinions outsized weight in order to present “both sides” of an issue. While that practice has been fading in climate science coverage, it’s still common in articles about climate policy debates, Mildenberger said.

Some politicians have a more skewed view than others. Those who oppose climate action tend to be even further off in their estimates of what the public wants, because of a psychological bias that assumes most of their constituents share their opinions. But the information lawmakers are exposed to also affects the size of that perception gap — it widened when officials got more campaign contributions from fossil fuel interests, and when they reported having more contact with conservative interest groups, Mildenberger’s 2019 study shows. Those groups might push commissioned polls that make a climate policy look unpopular, for example, Mildenberger said.

“There’s this enormous effort by the industry to shape what politicians think the public wants,” Mildenberger said.

RELATED:

• Nine million green jobs could be on the way as U.S. Senate passes $369-billion climate bill
• How to kick-start a clean energy renaissance in rural America
• The backroom battle for Canada’s climate future

Pro-fossil fuel interests might also engage in “astroturfing,” a PR strategy that fakes grassroots support for a cause, like Entergy’s natural-gas-fired power station in New Orleans. The tactic has also been used in national debates. In 2009, when Congress was considering the Waxman-Markey bill that would enact a federal cap-and-trade program, a lobbying group for the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity forged more than a dozen letters opposing it, supposedly from local community groups concerned about rising energy prices, and sent them to members of Congress. The bill passed the House by a slim margin but was never brought to a vote in the Senate.

There are accurate sources of information showing what Americans think about climate change, like nonpartisan polls from the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, which find that nearly three-quarters of Americans want to regulate carbon dioxide as a pollutant. Learning that the position they hold is unpopular with the electorate can even lead politicians to change their position on an issue, at least according to one study from Belgium.

More than a decade after the Waxman-Markey debacle, in 2022, Congress finally passed major climate legislation: The Inflation Reduction Act is investing hundreds of billions of dollars into clean energy, heat pumps, and other low-carbon technologies. Since there wasn’t significant public backlash to the law, it’s one data point that can help correct politicians’ misperceptions of public opinion, Mildenberger said. But he warns that fossil fuel interests are still very active in trying to block climate-friendly policies. “We should have every reason to expect that they’re going to keep on bringing more distorted information into the political arena to try and tilt that arena in their favor.”

This article was first published by Grist. Read the original article here. Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. 

The post Politicians think climate policies are much less popular than they actually are appeared first on Corporate Knights.

He endorsed his vice president, Kamala Harris, to take his place. “Today I want to offer my full support and endorsement for Kamala to be the nominee of our party this year,” he said in another statement. Not long after, Harris announced via the Biden campaign that she intends to run for president. “I am honored to have the president’s endorsement and my intention is to earn and win this nomination,” she said.

During his term, President Biden managed to shepherd a surprising number of major policies into law with a razor-thin Democratic majority in the Senate. His crowning achievement is signing the Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA — the biggest climate spending law in U.S. history, with the potential to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions up to 42 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. In announcing his withdrawal, Biden called it “the most significant climate legislation in the history of the world.”

The post Here’s what a Kamala Harris presidency could mean for climate appeared first on Corporate Knights.

On a frosty January day in 2006, a dozen inspectors from Quebec’s environment ministry, accompanied by a dozen members of the Sûreté du Québec, rolled into the farm of Clément Roy, in the Beauce countryside south of Quebec City. Together, they loaded all of Roy’s livestock – 585 sows, hogs and piglets, plus 12 cows – onto a fleet of transport trucks and drove them to the regional auction house to be sold. Vast quantities of the pig slurry and manure stored in Roy’s barns were sucked onto 50 tank trucks and removed.

The bill for this unprecedented “nettoyage,” plus a stiff fine, went to Roy. For more than a decade, the intransigent farmer had been violating environmental and agricultural regulations, ignoring repeated requests from the farming union and the environment ministry to clean up his act.

The message was clear: rules are rules. And the messenger was Tom Mulcair. The decision to put Clément Roy out of business reflected Mulcair’s conviction that for sustainable development to be anything more than a lofty goal, it needed to be codified in law, and that law needed to be enforced. This belief led to the crafting and passing of Quebec’s Sustainable Development Act, which anchored the principles of sustainable development in all facets of the provincial government’s administration while also adding the right to a healthy environment to the Quebec Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms. It was the first legislation of its kind in Canada.

This year, Corporate Knights is honouring Mulcair’s efforts with the 2024 Award of Distinction, announced in June. Past recipients include former Ontario premier Dalton McGuinty, former B.C. premier Gordon Campbell and Adèle Hurley, co-founder of the Canadian Coalition on Acid Rain.

From the outset, it was clear that the government of Jean Charest, elected in 2003 after two terms of Parti Québécois rule, was going to make the environment a priority. Having served as federal environment minister in Brian Mulroney’s government, Charest had led the Canadian delegation to the UN Conference on Environment and Development in Rio in 1992 – where 154 countries signed the Framework Convention on Climate Change, agreeing to work together to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and where Agenda 21, the action plan for achieving sustainable development, was launched. As premier, he renamed the Quebec portfolio the Ministry for Sustainable Development, Environment and Parks – the first and only of its kind in Canada – and appointed Mulcair, a whip-smart jurist and feisty parliamentarian, minister.

Mulcair was 49 when he joined the Charest cabinet; he had previously served two terms as a Liberal MNA for a Laval suburb and, prior to that, ran a private law practice and worked in legal capacities for multiple government ministries. His first priority as minister was to address two major – and related – environmental problems in Quebec: the blue-green algae blooms that were causing major ecosystem die-offs in many of the province’s lakes and rivers, and the agricultural run-off that was feeding them.

Having established itself as a major pork producer and exporter, Quebec had seen its pig farms grow in size and number and become a major source of leaked manure. Mulcair describes the relationship between pork producers and the government when he took office as “open warfare.” In an effort to bring the parties together, he agreed to lift the moratorium on new hog farms that had been declared by the previous government, on condition that all farms meet clearly established environmental standards. He also made it clear that there would be zero tolerance for violations, which is what led to that morning in mid-January, and the order that Mulcair now calls the toughest decision he made as minister.

“Sustainable development is not something you pound over people’s heads,” he says on the phone from his lake home in the Laurentians north of Montreal. “You have to work with people, to accompany them in their challenges. But you also have to enforce the rules.”

Mulcair’s determination to cultivate widespread understanding – and support – for the idea of sustainable development was reflected in the four-month road tour he took in 2005 with the first draft of his Sustainable Development Act. In a series of public hearings held in 21 municipalities across Quebec, Mulcair listened to Quebecers’ suggestions and concerns. He says the “super worthwhile” process resulted in a much stronger piece of legislation.

“It’s not Moses and the tablets,” he says of effective environmental policy. “This can’t just be the work of parties and bureaucrats.”

The Sustainable Development Act baked the idea of sustainable development into every aspect of the public service. It made “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” the government’s goal and enumerated 16 principles to guide it in getting there. Among them are the precautionary principle, which requires actors to err on the side of caution with respect to potential environmental impacts; polluter pays; and the internalization of costs, which insists that the value of a good reflect its entire life-cycle cost – including disposal. Mulcair considers the principle of “subsidiarity,” which delegates decision-making authority to the level of government closest to the citizens and communities concerned, to be a critical one. It has enabled Quebec municipalities to take a lead role in climate action. Key to the legislation’s effectiveness was the establishment of the position of sustainable development commissioner: a senior bureaucrat who evaluates each ministry’s implementation of the act and reports back to the auditor general.

It’s not Moses and the tablets. This can’t just be the work of parties and bureaucrats.

 

-Tom Mulcair, 2024 Award of Distinction

“There were lots of initiatives at the time,” says legal scholar Corinne Gendron, a professor of strategy and social and environmental responsibility at the Université du Québec à Montréal, “but they weren’t coordinated. The act meant that all ministries had to use the same strategy. The government had to change its practices to actually engage. It made sustainable development a core preoccupation.”

It also made it a human right. The Quebec charter was amended to include the clause “Every person has a right to live in a healthful environment in which biodiversity is preserved, to the extent and according to the standards provided by law.” It would be 17 more years before the federal government added this right to the Environmental Protection Act; it has yet to amend its own Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

It seems unfortunate, but fitting, that Mulcair stepped down from his ministerial position on a matter of principle. When he objected to the Quebec government’s proposal to sell a good chunk of Mont-Orford, a large national park in the Eastern Townships, to private developers, Charest shuffled him out of his ministry. The two had already done battle over Mulcair’s insistence that a developer restore a wetland in Laval that he had built on illegally. Clearly Mulcair’s convictions were, at times, inconvenient. So he packed them up and left provincial politics for the federal stage.

In 2007, he was elected MP for the Montreal riding of Outremont, representing the New Democratic Party, which had never made inroads in Quebec. As lieutenant to party leader Jack Layton, Mulcair helped grow support for the NDP in Quebec to the point that the party won the majority of Quebec seats in the 2011 federal election. This “orange wave” put the NDP in Official Opposition in Ottawa. Following the death of Layton, Mulcair was elected leader of the federal NDP, a position he held until 2017. As leader of the Official Opposition, Mulcair opposed the Keystone XL and Northern Gateway pipelines, pushed for an end to fossil fuel subsidies, and called for a cap-and-trade system for emissions and more rigorous environmental review processes.

Now retired from politics, Mulcair has made sustainable development the focus of his academic career. Having taught for several years in the political science department of the Université de Montréal, he is now expert in residence at the Université du Québec’s École nationale d’administration publique in Quebec City. This year he stepped down as chair of the board of Earth Day, a position he held for seven years.

As a political commentator, Mulcair disparages all the “emoting” he hears from politicians over the climate. What’s required, he says, is action. Easier said than done, some might say. To which Mulcair would doubtless respond: better said and done.

The post Tom Mulcair gets to the heart of green governance appeared first on Corporate Knights.

That includes voting “nay” to bills crafted to hold mining companies accountable for environmental damage, move Canada closer towards achieving its climate targets, create high-quality jobs in low-carbon industries nationwide and align Canadian laws with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, an international framework also known as UNDRIP.

Poilievre’s anti-environment record also includes voting “yea” for legislation designed to weaken environmental safeguards on new industrial projects and accelerate expansion of the oil and gas industry, Canada’s largest source of greenhouse gas emissions.

During his two decades in Parliament, Poilievre voted in favor of the environment and climate action just 13 times, DeSmog calculates based on a comprehensive list detailing every House of Commons vote he’s made as a federal politician.

“Those numbers say to me that he doesn’t believe we need to actually roll up our sleeves and work on climate change in a meaningful way,” said Bea Bruske, president of the Canadian Labour Congress, a national labour organization that’s been supporting ongoing federal legislation to foster climate-friendly union jobs.

“I’m very concerned about what a Pierre Poilievre government would look like,” she told DeSmog.

Poilievre’s office didn’t respond to questions from DeSmog about his environmental voting record. The Conservative leader, which some polls suggest is favoured by Canadians to be the next prime minister, stated earlier this year that as far as climate policy goes he’s in favour of “technology, not taxes,” without providing concrete details.

He is meanwhile enthusiastic about oil and gas expansion. “We’re going to clear the way for pipelines,” he has promised. “I am going to support pipelines south, north, east, west. We will build Canadian pipelines.”

A 20-year Voting Record

Poilievre was first elected as a Conservative MP in 2004. His first anti-environment vote took place that fall when he opposed a bill recognizing land claims of First Nations in the Northwest Territories in order to allow them more say over lands and water on their territories. The entire Conservative opposition also voted against it.

The following year he voted along with Conservative and Liberal MPs against legislation giving the province of Quebec greater resources and a mandate to implement the Kyoto climate accord.

After Conservative leader Stephen Harper became prime minister in 2006, and until Harper was voted out in 2015, Poilievre voted in lockstep with his party on a barrage of regulation-eviscerating bills, according to federal Green Party leader and MP Elizabeth May.

“Any chance that Pierre Poilievre had to vote against the environment, he always took it,” May told DeSmog.

That included his party’s passage of Bill C-38, an omnibus bill that May described at the time as “the Environmental Destruction Act.” That legislation, officially known as the “Jobs, Growth and Long-term Prosperity Act,” among other things repealed and replaced the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, weakened national water protections, killed implementation requirements for the Kyoto Protocol and exempted oil and gas pipelines from the Navigational Waters Act.

More than 100 of Poilievre’s anti-environmental votes came from opposing amendments and challenges brought forward by May and other opposition MPs attempting to lessen the bill’s pollution and climate impacts, according to records reviewed by DeSmog.

That legislation was followed by Bill C-45, another Conservative omnibus bill that in its attacks on water protections and Indigenous sovereignty helped ignite a nationwide First Nations-led protest movement known as Idle No More.

Obstruction Under Trudeau

Following Liberal leader Justin Trudeau becoming prime minister in 2015, Poilievre has consistently voted, along with other Conservative MPs, against climate action and other environmental protection measures. That includes dozens of votes against the Liberal government’s carbon pricing initiatives.

During that period the federal Liberals have failed to put Canada on track to achieving climate targets agreed to at the 2015 Paris negotiations, however. A big reason for that is the party’s ongoing support for the oil and gas industry, including purchasing the $34 billion Trans Mountain oil sands pipeline and backing gas export projects such as LNG Canada, which climate experts say will tap a massive gas field in British Columbia and Alberta that represents the world’s sixth largest “carbon bomb.”

“There’s no indication Conservatives will do anything other than destroy climate policy,” May said. “But we don’t have a credible climate plan now from the Liberals.”

Poilievre cast a rare “yea” vote of climate action in 2017, voting alongside 277 MPs from all major political parties in favor of a motion stating that “despite the withdrawal of the United States from the Paris Agreement, Canada remain committed to the implementation of the Agreement, as it is in the best interest of all Canadians.”

Poilievre over the years has also voted in favor of legislation protecting whales and providing cleaner drinking water for First Nations communities.

But any positive votes he’s cast are more than offset by a 20-year legacy of privileging polluting and atmosphere-warming industries over the environment, May said. Poilievre this spring cast more than three dozen votes to stall and prevent the passage of Bill C-50, a bill the Canadian Labour Congress claims “will create new sustainable jobs, help shift energy workers into sustainable jobs, and decarbonize good jobs to make them sustainable.”

“We’re incredibly disappointed with the Conservative approach to delaying this act,” Bruske, the organization’s president, said. “Putting such obstacles in the road to passing legislation tells me the Conservatives actually have no interest in addressing climate change.”

This article was first published on DeSmog. Read the original story here. 

The post Pierre Poilievre voted against the environment nearly 400 times appeared first on Corporate Knights.

The squeeze is causing the environmental, social and governance (ESG) industry to push back against conservative attacks by asserting that its only goal is to protect investors from social and environmental risk. 

But some industry leaders say the conflict demands a new approach based on real-world impact – particularly on CO2 reductions – and away from the sole reliance on environmental and social risk. 

In August, Texas banned 10 asset managers and about 350 investment funds from doing business with the state, including management of US$300 billion in public pension funds, for supposedly “boycotting” oil and gas companies from their portfolios. 

Recently, Republicans have focused their attacks on BlackRock, the largest asset manager in the world and a high-profile proponent of ESG investing. Nineteen Republican-led states accused the company of ignoring investor needs by supporting climate commitments that “force the phase-out of fossil fuels, increase energy prices, drive inflation, and weaken the national security of the United States.” 

BlackRock is scrambling to push back against the attacks, insisting it’s simply working to manage the risks of the energy and climate transition. ESG industry analysts have joined BlackRock in condemning the attacks. “These efforts are an attempt to gin up another phony grievance about how ‘liberal elites’ are destroying the country,” says Morningstar ESG analyst Jon Hale, adding it’s laughable to think of Wall Street money managers as left-wing ideological warriors.  

Former U.S. vice-president Mike Pence helped kick off the conservative backlash when he declared in May that “the woke left is poised to conquer corporate America and has set in motion a strategy to enforce their radical environmental and social agenda.”  

Republican denunciations of sustainable investing are an absurd caricature of the industry, but they have helped to expose the confusion and lack of standardization in ESG assessments, making the industry and the money managers that rely on them vulnerable to attacks from both climate-concerned investors and business-as-usual conservatives. 

Take BlackRock, for instance. The company is a strong proponent of “stakeholder capitalism” and is a prominent member of the Net Zero Asset Managers (NZAM) initiative, a global network pledging signatories to reduce financed emissions to net-zero by 2050. But these declarations contrast greatly with BlackRock’s record. 

The company holds more than US$300 billion in fossil fuel investments, including more than $100 billion in Texas companies. In its NZAM disclosures, BlackRock says it expects its portfolio companies to evolve toward net-zero, which means that it doesn’t need to divest its fossil fuel investments. It has also said it plans to vote for fewer climate-related shareholder resolutions in coming years as investors ask for increasingly detailed and demanding greenhouse gas commitments from their investee companies. 

These efforts are an attempt to gin up another phony grievance about how ‘liberal elites’ are destroying the country.

-Jon Hale, ESG analyst at Morningstar

But BlackRock isn’t the only financial company with an ESG reputation problem. Banks, investment managers and asset owners all rely on the global system of ESG ratings, which has faced growing criticism.   

In addition to confusion in ESG assessments, a recent Bloomberg investigation found that rating agencies like MSCI focus more on a checklist of corporate policies rather than actual company impacts. It cited the example of McDonald’s, which received a rating upgrade after improving some environmental policies despite the fact the company’s massive beef purchases produce more greenhouse gas emissions than the country of Portugal.  

This is prompting some industry leaders to call for reform. 

“That checklist is a blunt instrument that doesn’t reflect the challenges, subtleties and trade-offs of ESG,” says David Blood, who co-founded Generation Investment Management with former U.S. vice-president Al Gore. “People say sustainability or ESG is always a win-win – of course it isn’t. There are trade-offs.”   

This question of trade-offs is becoming increasingly important. The energy crisis triggered by the Ukraine war is forcing some asset managers to sacrifice CO2 reductions needed in the next decade for growing fossil fuel profits. This goes against traditional sustainable finance belief that there’s no conflict between financial return and ESG performance.  

“Investors increasingly want both sides of ESG: to mitigate risk and to make a difference in the world,” says Morningstar CEO Kunal Kapoor. “These are not the same, and they come with a new set of trade-offs for investors to make.” 

The current situation is causing ESG rating agencies to add impact metrics to their product listings, in part to meet new European Union sustainable fund classifications. And while many small investment managers have specialized in ESG impact for years, giant asset manager JPMorgan recently announced a new “double materiality” product, incorporating present risk and future impact. 

The UN-backed Race to Zero initiative also has the potential to drive real-world impact. Earlier this year, Race to Zero mandated that all entities pledging to achieve net-zero by 2050 under UN rules will need to avoid new fossil fuel investments, starting within 12 months. This includes banks, insurers, asset managers and asset owners that are members of the US$130-trillion Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero. 

This is expected to put enormous pressure on companies like BlackRock and the world’s largest banks and asset managers to reject new oil, gas and coal investments, setting the stage for even more conflict with Republican lawmakers. 

But this may be a necessary consequence of needed ESG industry reform. If the sector can evolve toward a model of transparent, real-world corporate assessment, rather than relying solely on the notion of present-day risk, it will be better equipped to withstand the clash from conservative and sustainability critics. 

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

The post ESG squeezed between Republican attacks on ‘woke capitalism’ and climate investors appeared first on Corporate Knights.

The U.K. has a new prime minister, and, even though she once served as environment minister, questions are swirling about how committed Liz Truss and her government are to tackling climate change. 

Since taking office September 6, she has pledged to expand oil and gas production from the North Sea and ended a ban on fracking, while during her campaign, she said she would change rules so that farmers could not put solar panels on their fields. 

Meanwhile, some of her ministerial appointments have also sparked alarm. This included making Jacob Rees-Mogg, who looks like a top-hat wearing Victorian factory owner and has many of the same attitudes, secretary of state for business, energy and industrial strategy, and therefore responsible for energy policy. He has cast doubt on the urgency of the climate crisis in the past and is an enthusiastic advocate of both fracking and more North Sea development. 

Tom Burke, co-founder of the environmental think tank E3G, told The Guardian that Rees-Mogg “has showed no sign of understanding the complexity or opportunity of net zero.” Burke added that “the single most important thing to do in energy policy now is to bring demand down. I have no confidence that he will take this forward.” 

Rebecca Newsom, head of politics at Greenpeace U.K., added that “Rees-Mogg is the last person who should be in charge of the energy brief, at the worst possible moment.” She blamed him for pushing former prime minister David Cameron to cut funding for energy-efficiency programs, wind and solar, a move that has added £150 to every energy bill as gas prices have soared. 

During the Tory leadership campaign, both Kemi Badenoch, the new trade secretary, and Suella Braverman, home secretary, said that the U.K.’s net-zero target – which is legally binding – should be suspended. 

There are some encouraging signs, though: the new Chancellor of the Exchequer, Kwasi Kwarteng, a former energy minister and then business secretary, was heavily involved in the rollout of the U.K.’s Net Zero Strategy and has frequently been a strong advocate for the strategic importance of the energy transition. He has spoken out recently against fracking in the U.K., arguing that it “won’t materially affect the wholesale market price.” 

He was also an advocate for the previous government to invest more in energy efficiency and to end the ban on onshore wind, clashing with other members of the Cabinet and the Treasury in the process. He runs the Treasury now, so that could herald big changes on energy efficiency, at least. In addition, he is in a position to limit the damage Rees-Mogg can do because he holds the purse strings. 

Rees-Mogg is the last person who should be in charge of the energy brief, at the worst possible moment.

-Rebecca Newsom, head of politics at Greenpeace U.K.

While there was no mention of energy efficiency in new measures to tackle one of Europe’s most serious energy-price crises that Truss announced in Parliament on Thursday, the government’s Climate Change Committee and National Infrastructure Commission jointly wrote to the PM, calling on her to “develop credible policies for energy efficiency in buildings. Investing in efficiency now will provide meaningful reductions in the amount of energy wasted over the long-term and support the necessary transition to low-carbon heat.”  

Simon Clarke, the new “levelling up” secretary, is also a strong advocate for net-zero, while Graham Stuart, who has long supported bolder climate action, will be climate minister and is expected to provide a strong counterpoint to his boss, Rees-Mogg.  

There is no doubt that the new Cabinet is divided on the urgency of tackling climate change, but there are powerful voices in favour of action. And the Conservative leadership campaign – during which climate advocates were able to get all the candidates to commit to the U.K.’s net-zero target – showed that the climate action lobby is now a significant political force within the Tory party. If necessary, it can join forces with opposition MPs to thwart poor policies.  

Perhaps that’s why Truss asked Chris Skidmore, former energy and climate minister and one of the biggest Tory supporters of climate action, to conduct a review into meeting the U.K.’s net-zero commitments in the most economically efficient way.  

Given the simple economic and political fundamentals – gas in Europe is nine times more expensive than renewable energy at the moment, and renewable projects can be developed in months (if the permitting process is sorted out), while fracking and the North Sea will take years to come online – this report, to be completed before Christmas, could help build support for climate action in the party. 

Fracking has just 17% support in the U.K. compared to 76% for renewable energy projects, and any proposals would be subject to widespread protests. 

Most importantly, Truss does not command the overwhelming support of her party in Parliament. A majority of her MPs wanted someone else as leader, raising questions about the extent to which she will be able to get any policies through Parliament, including anti-climate ones.  

Her party is a long way behind in the polls. Her ability to command a majority for contentious anti-climate policies is unproven at best. And don’t underestimate the impact of the new king: Charles III’s views on climate change are well-known and harder now than ever to ignore, even if he is now limited in what he can say in public. In the end, her ability to impose climate-unfriendly actions may be severely constrained. And in the absence of a global event on home turf such as last year’s COP26 climate conference in Glasgow, it seems unlikely she will be as forceful an advocate for climate action globally as her predecessor was.  

The post Will Britain’s new PM Liz Truss derail climate action? appeared first on Corporate Knights.