Wildfires are raging in every province and territory across Canada, leaving entire First Nations communities burnt, upending the lives of thousands of evacuees and creating plumes of toxic smoke dirtying the air in major cities like Toronto and New York. 

While some politicians claim the out-of-control wildfires are being primarily caused by improper forest management, scientists agree that climate change, driven by greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels, is the main culprit.

To stop contributing to the problem, the Canadian government could be implementing strict limits on the oil and gas industry for their carbon dioxide emissions. But Prime Minister Mark Carney has rejected that idea, opting instead for an unproven technological fix. 

In doing so, The Narwhal reported this week, the prime minister has become the latest in a long line of politicians to make big promises about carbon capture and storage to cut industrial emissions, despite the technology’s meager track record in Canada.

Read on to learn more.

1. Climate change from fossil fuels is making wildfires more severe and more frequent

Climate change is altering rainfall and storm patterns, creating hotter and drier conditions and more lighting strikes, causing fire seasons to start earlier and last longer and making those fires burn hotter, grow bigger and spread quicker. The result: Canada’s most recent fire seasons have been among the worst on record.

There’s only one real way to slow this escalating problem, scientists say: stop using so much coal, oil and natural gas, the fossil fuels that generate the emissions that are trapping heat in the atmosphere, changing the climate and leading to more extreme weather.

In Canada, the oil and gas industry is the country’s largest source of emissions. That’s partly because the type of petroleum in Alberta’s oilsands, the world’s fourth-largest proven oil reserve, requires extra electricity, steam, fuel and machines to turn it into usable products like gasoline compared to some other oil deposits. Oilsands emissions have grown from 41 million tonnes in 2007 to 92 million tonnes in 2024.

2. Carney expects Canada will soon generate more, not less, emissions

As Ontario faces what’s now estimated to be its worst wildfire season on record and other provinces and territories have been similarly devastated in recent years, Carney is focused on coordinating an emergency response with those jurisdictions, including managing the thousands of firefighting personnel and hundreds of aircraft involved. The prime minister says he’s committed to deploying “every resource needed to keep Canadians safe.” 

He also signed a deal with Alberta meant to increase oil production. The deal, which includes a commitment to build a new oil pipeline, is expected to result in more carbon pollution. Carney has admitted his government’s actions will raise emissions. More Canadian emissions means Canada is contributing more to the global problem of climate change that’s making wildfires worse.

Environmental advocate Catherine Abreu, a former member of Canada’s Net-Zero Advisory Body, told MPs in June that Carney’s government has “repealed or weakened virtually every climate policy and regulation that Canada had developed in the last decade.”

3. Instead of capping emissions, Carney is betting on carbon capture technology

Carney’s deal with Alberta promises not to follow through with a proposal, first made during the government of former prime minister Justin Trudeau, to implement an emissions cap on the oil and gas sector. 

A cap is a government mandate to prevent emissions from rising beyond a certain point. It’s something the industry itself previously said was achievable: in 2022 a group of oilsands producers came out with a plan they said could cut 22 million tonnes of annual emissions by 2030. That plan involved carbon capture, a technology that filters out carbon dioxide from industrial exhaust streams and stores it so it doesn’t get released into the air. 

But even though the Trudeau government proposed the emissions cap as a way to ensure the industry followed through with that plan, oil companies fought the cap proposal and Carney eventually agreed not to implement it.

Now, Carney’s deal with Alberta includes an agreement to build a carbon capture and storage network in the province, but the ambition has been dialed back considerably. Five oilsands companies agreed in July to use carbon capture technology to remove just six million tonnes of emissions per year by 2035, and a “range of technologies” to eventually capture 16 million tonnes per year by 2045. 

Compare that with an average of 20 million tonnes a year in new emissions from the oilsands that the Canadian Climate Institute has estimated will result from higher production levels to feed the new oil pipeline in the deal.

4. The track record for carbon capture of industrial emissions in Canada is bleak

Carbon capture and storage is real, and in use at nine commercial operations in Canada. But the technology is expensive and requires lots of new construction to scale up, while globally it has underperformed, according to the International Institute for Sustainable Development.

The results speak for themselves. Over a 24-year period, 68.7 million tonnes of carbon dioxide was captured across Canada, according to Environment and Climate Change Canada. That means the oilsands added more to the atmosphere in one year than carbon capture technology has ever stopped from industrial sources over more than two decades.

While oilsands emissions more than doubled from 2007 to 2024, the cumulative amount of carbon being captured from industrial sources is still “on the order of several [million] tonnes per year,” a Natural Resources Canada spokesperson told The Narwhal.

But that’s relatively tiny, compared to the eye-popping figure of 600 million tonnes a year that a government report had once claimed Canada could theoretically capture.

5. Carney’s support for carbon capture makes him the latest in a long line of politicians to tout its benefits

Despite this underperformance, both Liberal and Conservative federal governments in Canada keep projecting optimism about carbon capture’s prospects, dating back to former prime minister Stephen Harper, who gave a speech in Edmonton in 2007 that sounds strangely familiar now. This week, The Narwhal peered into the historical public record — and the national archives — to show just how real the enthusiasm has been.

In Edmonton, Harper talked about “the exciting new technology called carbon capture and storage.” He told Canadians that, “instead of pumping tonnes of carbon dioxide into the Earth’s atmosphere, we may be able to collect it from our oilsands … and pump it deep underground where it will remain for eternity.” He projected confidence, saying he felt “the era of empty rhetoric on the environment is over” and “we’re taking real action that will produce real, tangible results.”

In 2011, his then-natural resources minister Joe Oliver called Canada “a world leader in carbon capture and storage” and “in an excellent position to use this technology on a wide scale.” (Oliver recently wrote an op-ed opposing the latest carbon capture proposal in the oilsands, in part because of the technology’s spotty track record.)

After Trudeau won power in 2015, his first natural resources minister, Jim Carr, told a ballroom full of people in New York in 2016 that carbon capture is one of “the most pressing issues of the day.” One of Carr’s successors, Seamus O’Regan, would go on to describe carbon capture as “an integral part of lowering emissions” that was part of “how we get to net zero.” In 2021, he said Canada was “on the cusp of doing a lot of these things.”

Last year, Carney’s minister of energy and natural resources, Tim Hodgson, a former oilsands company board member, told a Calgary business crowd that the government, as much as private industry, should be pulling for the carbon capture project in the oilsands. In a faint echo of Harper, he said this government “will not be a government of talk, but a government of action.”

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Summary

• Two decades of records show Canadian politicians making big promises about carbon capture technology.
• In 2008, one government report claimed Canada could capture as much as 600 million tonnes of carbon a year — and carbon capture technology could be “implemented quickly.”
• From 2000 to 2024, a total of just 68.7 million tonnes of carbon dioxide was captured across Canada and experts say the technology has yet to be proven at scale.

It was March 2007. Apple had just debuted the iPhone. The Iraq War was raging. Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth had won two Oscars. And the prime minister of Canada was talking about “the exciting new technology called carbon capture and storage.”

“Instead of pumping tonnes of carbon dioxide into the Earth’s atmosphere, we may be able to collect it from our oilsands, our coal-fired electrical plants and other industrial emitters, and pump it deep underground where it will remain for eternity,” Stephen Harper told a crowd of journalists at an event in Edmonton that year.

“If we can perfect this technology, we can use it not only to curb Canada’s contribution to greenhouse gas production, but we could also export it around the world.”

It was the beginning of a long line of claims from political leaders in Canada about how carbon capture could slash planet-warming industrial emissions, including in the oilsands, the world’s fourth-largest proven oil reserve, where 159 billion barrels lie buried under Albertan sand and clay.

For close to 20 years, both Liberal and Conservative governments have talked about using carbon capture and storage technology to filter out carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, from exhaust streams and store it so it doesn’t get released into the atmosphere, where it traps heat and causes climate change. Yet, while oilsands carbon pollution more than doubled from 2007 to 2024 to 92 million tonnes, the ability of facilities in Canada to capture carbon from industrial sources hasn’t yet grown beyond a few million tonnes of emissions per year.

Meanwhile, the consequences of fossil fuels and climate change are being felt today. Life is more expensive, cities have dirtier air from wildfires, deadly heat waves and other extreme weather are more common, First Nations are disproportionately threatened with disasters and Canadians are more at risk of poverty, heart disease, cancer and premature death.

Around the time Harper spoke in Edmonton, mining the oilsands was thought to be generating 26 million tonnes of emissions. Since then, the federal national inventory report has recalculated historical emissions using updated methodologies and new data to find it was closer to 41 million tonnes. The petroleum in the oilsands starts as a viscous goo called bitumen, and takes large amounts of electricity, steam, fuel and heavy machinery to mine and transform into usable products. This extra activity means oilsands production has been associated with more emissions than some other oil deposits, adding to its climate impact when its end products like gasoline are eventually burned for energy.

There was also a boom happening when Harper made his remarks. Investment in the oilsands had tripled from 2003 to 2007, leap-frogging manufacturing, while oil and gas operating profits had doubled. Office space in Calgary, where many oil companies are headquartered, had dried up as the province rode a wave of record-low unemployment. By 2009, production levels from the oilsands would muscle out other forms of oil production in Canada.

Scientists agree the way to slow the chaos unleashed by climate change is to stop using so much oil, gas and coal. But Harper wasn’t about to impose strict government limits on oilsands emissions that day in 2007. Instead, he would talk about using carbon capture as a possible environmental and economic solution.

“This is a dream that could truly change the world,” he said.

“Friends, the era of empty rhetoric on the environment is over. We’re taking real action that will produce real, tangible results.”

Nineteen years later, that dream is still waiting to be realized.

From 2000 to 2024, 68.7 million tonnes of carbon dioxide was captured in the country, Environment and Climate Change Canada confirmed to The Narwhal. That means the oilsands added more emissions to the atmosphere in one year, 2024, than carbon capture equipment has ever stopped from industrial sources over roughly a quarter-century.

It’s also a small fraction of the capture amounts once thought possible. A 2008 report that came out of Harper’s announcement said Canada could theoretically capture as much as 600 million tonnes a year, and that carbon capture could be “implemented quickly, within a decade, using existing technology.”

Carbon capture and storage “is a viable way to achieve significant domestic greenhouse gas reductions,” the report stated, and is a “must-have for western Canada which relies on fossil energy.”

Instead, after tremendous attention and investment, this year Canada will be able to capture “on the order of several [million] tonnes per year,” a Natural Resources Canada spokesperson told The Narwhal. (The department declined to offer a precise figure when asked.)

Capturing this amount when the oil industry is sending so much more into the air is equivalent to taking a million cars off the highway while 30 million more drive up the on-ramp.

“Carbon capture has never, ever been proven at scale, or price. That’s just a fact,” Catherine McKenna, a former environment minister under the Justin Trudeau government, said in an interview.

“The oil and gas companies talked to me about carbon capture and storage, and made promises, for like a decade. We have yet to see anything.”

Now, like Harper before him, Prime Minister Mark Carney is putting his faith in carbon capture technology to do the heavy lifting, while he advocates for more oil production.

Carney struck a deal with Alberta that promises not to follow through with a Trudeau-era proposal for an emissions cap on the oil and gas sector.

Instead, the deal, meant to grow oil production and get a new oil pipeline to the West Coast built, includes an agreement to build a carbon capture and storage network in the province.

In July, five oilsands companies agreed to terms that envision using carbon capture to suck out six million tonnes of oilsands emissions per year by 2035. The project, dubbed Pathways, is supposed to use a “range of technologies” to eventually capture 16 million tonnes per year by 2045.

“The Alberta [deal] will build carbon capture and storage,” Carney said in Parliament in January. “It will build our future.” The deal, he told reporters in June, is about “working together, getting results for the citizens.”

His minister of energy and natural resources, Tim Hodgson, a former oilsands company board member, told a Calgary business crowd last year that the government, as much as private industry, should be pulling to get Pathways off the ground.

“All of us — governments and industry — need to get the Pathways project done. This government will not be a government of talk, but a government of action,” Hodgson said.

The federal government was boasting about being ‘a world leader in carbon capture’ in 2011

Harper’s full remarks from that day in 2007 are held at the national archives in Ottawa, where The Narwhal listened to a recording of them in June.

But plenty of other comments exist online in the public record of others talking optimistically about carbon capture to lower emissions.

In 2011, for example, Harper’s then-natural resources minister Joe Oliver said Canada was “a world leader in carbon capture and storage” and was “in an excellent position to use this technology on a wide scale.”

The next year he repeated this message: “Canada is in an excellent position to lead the world in the development, implementation and deployment of carbon capture and storage technology.”

In 2013, he said the government was “devoting significant amounts of money to carbon capture and storage, and we are doing that in co-operation with companies.”

Oliver now opposes the latest carbon capture proposal in the oilsands, in part because of the technology’s spotty track record and uncertain impact.

The trend continued after Trudeau’s Liberal government won power in 2015. Trudeau’s first natural resources minister, Jim Carr, told a ballroom full of energy analysts in New York in 2016 that carbon capture is one of “the most pressing issues of the day.”

The next year, he said carbon capture improves Canada’s “environmental performance.”

One of Carr’s successors, Seamus O’Regan, would describe carbon capture as “an integral part of lowering emissions” and said it was part of “how we get to net zero.” In 2021, he told CBC News Canada was “on the cusp of doing a lot of these things.”

François-Philippe Champagne, who in 2024 was Trudeau’s industry minister and is now finance minister, described Canadian companies then as “world leaders in carbon capture” and portrayed it as one of the “clean-tech solutions for the net-zero economy.”

(Story continues below.)

Two decades of political support for carbon capture

• Jan. 23, 2006: Harper Conservatives win minority government
• May 11, 2006 “Canada is already on the right track, particularly in research on energy efficiency, alternative energy sources and carbon capture and storage technologies. These technological advances will help us reduce greenhouse gas emissions and will enable Canada to capitalize on its huge energy potential for the benefit of all Canadians.”— Christian Paradis, parliamentary secretary to the minister of natural resources, in Parliament
• March 8, 2007 “Instead of pumping tons of carbon dioxide into the Earth’s atmosphere, we may be able to collect it from our oilsands, our coal-fired electrical plants and other industrial emitters, and pump it deep underground where it will remain for eternity. … Friends, the era of empty rhetoric on the environment is over.”— Stephen Harper, prime minister, Library and Archives Canada
• April 4, 2008 “Our government is ensuring that Canada is at the leading edge of clean technologies to reduce emissions and adapt to environmental change. That is why in Budget 2008, we announced $5 million … [to] address outstanding issues in the deployment of carbon capture and storage technologies.”— Gary Lunn, natural resources minister, press release
• Oct. 14, 2008: Harper Conservatives win minority government
• Oct. 18, 2009 “Carbon capture and storage is the most viable technology for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Our government’s recent investment in large-scale demonstration projects further advances Canada’s leadership in this technology, while building a knowledge base to share this expertise with our global partners.”— Lisa Raitt, natural resources minister, press release
• March 16, 2010 “The $1-billion fund relating to green technology investments, including carbon capture and storage, which was set up in the 2009 budget, is not a research investment. These are demonstration projects investments. … The only known technology to abate carbon emissions from thermal coal plants is carbon capture and storage. It is the only technology that has ever been discovered that can actually abate emissions.”— Jim Prentice, environment minister, at committee
• May 2, 2011: Harper Conservatives win majority government
• June 24, 2011 “Canada is a world leader in carbon capture and storage and we are in an excellent position to use this technology on a wide scale.”— Joe Oliver, natural resources minister, press release
• March 27, 2012 “Canada is in an excellent position to lead the world in the development, implementation and deployment of carbon capture and storage technology.”— Joe Oliver, natural resources minister, at committee
• May 21, 2013 “We are devoting significant amounts of money to carbon capture and storage, and we are doing that in co-operation with companies, because that is the way to do it. Our government is a world leader in carbon capture and storage.”— Joe Oliver, natural resources minister, in Parliament
• Oct. 6, 2014 “We were proud to support the research and development of carbon capture and sequestration, and see the technology developed through commercialization at the Boundary Dam project, a technology that will reduce greenhouse gas emissions at that facility by 90 per cent. We remain committed to growing the economy and reducing greenhouse gas emissions with world-leading technologies.”—Greg Rickford, natural resources minister, in Parliament
• Feb. 19, 2015 “Since 2006, our government has made investments of over $10 billion to transition Canada toward a clean energy economy and help reduce greenhouse gas emissions over the long term. … These funds have helped establish Canada as a global leader in the research, development and demonstration of carbon capture and storage technologies.”— Colin Carrie, parliamentary secretary to the minister of the environment, in Parliament
• Oct. 19, 2015: Trudeau Liberals win majority government
• April 4, 2016 On a North American memorandum of understanding on climate and energy: “It’s an aspirational agreement that focuses our three countries on the most pressing issues of the day … [including] advancing the competitiveness of carbon capture, use and storage.”— Jim Carr, natural resources minister, prepared remarks for a speech
• Sep. 14, 2017 “Carbon capture and utilization technology creates new products and business revenue stream opportunities while improving our environmental performance, creating jobs and driving clean growth in the process.”— Jim Carr, natural resources minister, press release
• Nov. 9, 2018 About a $2-million investment in a carbon capture project: “This project leverages today’s traditional resources to deliver tomorrow’s clean energy solutions. Developing and adopting clean technologies will help Canada meet its domestic and international climate change commitments and help maintain our natural resource advantage for years to come.”— Amarjeet Sohi, natural resources minister, press release
• June 17, 2019 On signing two memorandums of understanding: “The second commits Natural Resources Canada and the Japan Coal Energy Center to work together on clean energy, including carbon capture utilization and storage technologies.”“Canada is taking a leadership role in the clean growth century by balancing the environment and economy both domestically and internationally.”— Paul Lefebvre, parliamentary secretary to the minister of natural resources, press release
• Oct. 21, 2019: Trudeau Liberals win minority government 
• June 15, 2020 “We see carbon capture and sequestration as an integral part of lowering emissions and making emissions more competitive, making our oil and gas industry more competitive.”— Seamus O’Regan, natural resources minister, at committee
• March 9, 2021 “Carbon capture technology creates jobs, lowers emissions and increases our competitiveness. This is how we get to net zero.”— Seamus O’Regan, natural resources minister, press release
• April 21, 2021 “I lead a department of scientists who are looking at things like carbon capture and storage, both onshore and offshore. … We are on the cusp of doing a lot of these things.”— Seamus O’Regan, natural resources minister, interview
• Sept. 20, 2021: Trudeau Liberals win minority government
• March 28, 2022 “We are taking bold action on climate change. … We see carbon capture and underground storage as part of the solution.”— Terry Duguid, parliamentary secretary to the minister of environment and climate change, in Parliament
• Feb. 7, 2023 “We are investing billions of dollars in climate action and into the new economy. We have eliminated six fossil fuel subsidies and are on our way to eliminating nine. We need to use every tool in the toolbox to reduce our emissions, including carbon capture.”— Terry Duguid, parliamentary secretary to the minister of environment and climate change, in Parliament
• May 8, 2024 “My colleagues are well aware that Canadian companies are world leaders in carbon capture and hydrogen fuel cell technology. That’s why we will continue to support the adoption of made-in-Canada clean-tech solutions for the net-zero economy.”— François-Philippe Champagne, industry minister, at committee
• April 28, 2025: Carney Liberals win minority government
• May 23, 2025 “We will invest in carbon capture, methane reduction and other technologies to ensure Canadian oil and gas is not only produced responsibly, but is the most competitive in the world. All of us — governments and industry — need to get the Pathways project done.”— Tim Hodgson, natural resources minister, prepared remarks for a speech
• April 13, 2026: Carney Liberals achieve majority government
• June 25, 2026 “We will deepen co-operative federalism with initiatives [like] Alberta’s proposed carbon capture and pipeline to the West Coast. … With the implementation agreement around carbon capture, [the government is] working together, getting results for the citizens.”— Mark Carney, prime minister, news conference (not online)

The Trudeau government’s emissions cap proposal came together after the Oil Sands Alliance, a group of major producers formerly known as the Pathways Alliance, had publicized a project they originally claimed could cut 22 million tonnes of oilsands emissions by 2030, with carbon capture being a central element of their plans.

The natural resources minister at the time, Jonathan Wilkinson, portrayed the emissions cap as a way to ensure the industry did what it said it could do.

Oilsands companies fought the proposal. A group of them pushed the government to delay and weaken the emissions cap’s rules, saying they needed “flexible and cost-effective” rules and a “long lead time” to prepare. By 2024, the boss of one of the country’s largest oil and gas companies was openly calling for the idea to be abandoned. Alberta Premier Danielle Smith also came out against the proposal.

Last year, after Carney won power, Canadian oil and gas executives and lobby groups called on him to “unwind the past decade” of Trudeau-era policy altogether, killing not only the emissions cap but also other environmental rules. The prime minister has ticked off several boxes on their wishlist.

The Narwhal reached out to more than a dozen current and former government officials to ask them if they stood behind their comments about carbon capture today, knowing what they know now.

Minister Hodgson’s spokesperson forwarded the questions to Natural Resources Canada. A spokesperson for his department responded that technologies like carbon capture are “important tools in Canada’s broader climate toolbox of measures to reduce or remove emissions, while strengthening growth and security.”

Carbon capture and storage “holds great opportunity to advance climate competitiveness, and is an area where Canada can lead internationally and sell components and expertise in global markets,” they said in an email to The Narwhal. It offers a “practical path to reduce emissions, protect and create jobs, sustain economic growth and keep Canadian industries globally competitive.”

A spokesperson for Champagne declined to comment. The others did not respond.

The Narwhal also sent separate questions to Natural Resources Canada directly. Another spokesperson claimed Canada’s industrial carbon capture rates will rise in the coming years.

“While Canada has already captured and stored or used significant volumes of [carbon dioxide] the sector is growing, with new projects and infrastructure expected to come online as technology improves and evolves,” the spokesperson said in an email.

There’s a “growing list of potential projects across multiple industrial sectors” today, they said, and “these projects are expected to increase capture volumes over time.”

Canada doesn’t publish an official forward-looking estimate of carbon capture potential, the department said. And the spokesperson pointed to a number of challenges with carbon capture adoption. For one, the projects are “large, capital‑intensive and technically complex.”

Carbon capture is expensive. The Pathways proposal was initially estimated at $16.5 billion and is now pegged at between $20 billion and $30 billion, despite lowering the amount of emissions it is intended to capture. At times it has seemed like it could struggle to break even, according to the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis.

The government is offering federal financial incentives for carbon capture, and Carney reversed a Trudeau-era ban on companies from accessing that incentive when they pump the captured carbon into wells to loosen up more oil for extraction.

Despite hitting record profits in recent years, oil companies have in the past largely resisted spending the billions of dollars necessary to build out carbon capture equipment across their large properties. Instead the industry spent years lobbying the government for lucrative public subsidies to install and run carbon capture systems.

Scaling up carbon capture and storage also requires building new pipelines and storage hubs. A Natural Resources Canada spokesperson said the technology continues to “evolve” and investors are looking for enough “market demand for low‑carbon products,” which the government believes has been bolstered with the Alberta deal.

Globally, the technology has underperformed, according to the International Institute for Sustainable Development. One of Canada’s own flagship projects captured less carbon than initially thought. In 2022, more than 400 academics wrote an open letter to Canada saying carbon capture was “neither economically sound nor proven at scale,” despite decades of research.

Carbon capture used to secure social licence for pumping more oil

When it comes to techniques for keeping carbon out of the atmosphere, using carbon capture technology on industrial sources is only one approach.

Other types of technologies, collectively called carbon removal, can draw existing emissions from the atmosphere or store carbon permanently in other forms like rock.

There are 11 million tonnes worth of annual permanent carbon removal capacity in the planning stages in the country, according to Carbon Removal Canada, an independent non-profit. Those plans are for new projects such as direct air capture or carbon mineralization, but not industrial carbon capture.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the United Nations body that provides governments with climate science, has said carbon capture and carbon removal technologies will have to be part of the mix of techniques that countries use to slow the rise in planetary temperatures causing climate change.

It’s a point Steven Guilbeault, who served as another environment minister under Trudeau and helped develop the emissions cap proposal with Wilkinson, raised several times in Parliament. Canada needed to look at every possible technology that could help reduce emissions, he argued.

But the United Nations panel was also clear these kinds of technologies are not a substitute for a “substantial reduction in fossil fuel use,” rather something to be used alongside those efforts.

In an interview with The Narwhal, Guilbeault said Canadian politicians have often misunderstood the difference, seeing carbon capture as “a way to continue pumping oil and gas in Canada.”

“It’s a technology we will need, but it’s not in lieu of reducing emissions, and unfortunately it seems that a lot of people haven’t understood that,” he said.

The technology “is a very convenient, theoretical, technical fix to a larger problem,” Guilbeault said. “We humans tend to look for easy fixes, sometimes, to complex problems.”

Evidence also suggests carbon capture has been popularized by the oil and gas industry to shield itself from criticism. In 2022, a U.S. Congressional probe found oil companies were talking about carbon capture publicly as a way to mitigate their climate impact, but internally were discussing it as a way to secure “social licence” to continue producing fossil fuels.

In June, the investigative outlets ProPublica and Drilled published evidence the oil company BP helped shape an academic paper that oversold carbon capture’s readiness, while the oil and gas industry funded research at universities that boosted the technology.

Guilbeault said he has “always been skeptical” of the oil industry’s carbon capture proposal in Alberta.

His skepticism is shared by former oilsands executive and former member of Parliament Martha Hall Findlay, who helped develop the industry’s initial Pathways carbon capture proposal. She now argues Canada should “postpone” the project and focus on other priorities.

Federal Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre is also skeptical of Carney’s plan.

A former Harper government minister of democratic reform, and employment and social development, Poilievre has supported subsidizing carbon capture in the oil and gas industry in the past. In 2022, shortly after becoming leader, he said the Canadian energy industry was “leading in the world” on carbon capture, and accused the Trudeau government of being “slow to support it and insufficient in that support.”

In 2023 he asked, “Why do we not use technology instead of taxes to fight climate change? Why do we not support our energy sector in pumping the carbon back into the ground through carbon capture and storage?”

More recently, Poilievre has criticized Carney’s deal with Alberta for committing billions of dollars to a “money-losing carbon capture project that has never been proven anywhere.”

Asked by The Narwhal why he’s soured on support for carbon capture, Poilievre said he only sees value if it’s used to extract more oil.

“When you pump carbon back in the ground and pressurize the geology, and you can bring up more oil, they can then go out and make the world a better place,” he said.

“The other is just pumping air into the ground and getting nothing in return. … How’s it going to make money?”

Updated on July 22, 2026, at 11:48 a.m. ET: This story was updated to include the latest figure for 2007 oilsands emissions from the national inventory report. While a report from Alberta published in 2008 put the figure at 26 million tonnes, the national inventory report has recalculated historical emissions figures with updated methodology and additional data, putting it at 41 million tonnes of emissions.

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Federal Minister of Indigenous Services Mandy Gull-Masty has unveiled a new and long-awaited bill to provide safe drinking water to First Nations, which she says was written to ensure “we have provincial partners at the table.” Ontario chiefs say they were shut out and their right to clean water was not recognized. 

Gull-Masty denied her government caved to provincial pressure in Bill C-37, or An Act respecting water, source water, drinking water, wastewater and related infrastructure on First Nation lands, that sets out principles to provide safe drinking water and disposal of wastewater for First Nations.

“My conversations with leadership and the chiefs that have spoken to me understand that we are trying to pass a bill that is going to be protected and stand the test of time,” the minister said at a press conference on Parliament Hill on June 16.

“I’m not trying to put a bill forward that is going to be challenged,” she said. “I’m trying to put a bill forward that partners, provinces and territories feel can advance, that they can work with us.”

The Chiefs of Ontario, however, say First Nations were not consulted in the process. The group is “cautiously optimistic” but remains concerned about the approach to this issue by the government of Prime Minister Mark Carney.“Unlike previous legislative efforts, which were developed through meaningful dialogue and partnerships with First Nations Knowledge Keepers [and] technicians, Bill C-37 was introduced without broad or meaningful input from First Nations,” Linda Debassige, Anishinabek Nation Grand Council Chief, and a member of the Chiefs of Ontario leadership council, said in a Tuesday press conference in Rama, Ont. 

“Our letters of advocacy have been met with a deafening silence, to be honest. We do not have access to parliamentary privileged dialogue or cabinet discussions in relation to this.”

It’s been over a year since the Liberal Party promised in their election platform to “immediately introduce and pass legislation affirming that First Nations have a human right to clean drinking water.” In the last six months, two First Nations in northern Ontario have declared severely worsening water crises due to failed infrastructure; one of the communities, Kashechewan, remains entirely evacuated.

The bill released this week states that the quality of water on First Nations lands must at minimum meet either federal guidelines for Canadian drinking water quality and for wastewater, or the standards in place in the province or territory where the lands are located. It’s backed by $4.6 billion for First Nations communities to build, operate and maintain water and wastewater systems, according to the press release, which adds to the $9.4 billion committed to these projects over the past decade.

The minister will still have to come out with regulations for a “protection zone,” which the bill leaves undefined. The use of these zones would hand First Nations jurisdiction over water sources adjacent to their lands — that is, if the nation and the federal and provincial governments have all agreed on the rules in force. 

“We have to acknowledge that [water] is not stagnant, it moves around,” Gull-Masty said. “For water that is adjacent or flowing in and out, I think that the important part of the work that we’re undertaking is that partners and territories understand that they also have a role to play.”

In addition to defining “protection zones,” the bill empowers the minister to come out with regulations on a dozen different aspects of water services, including source water protections, training and certification, occupational health and safety, monitoring and inspections, emergency planning, permitting and more. The government can even design regulations to govern the disclosure of information.

But the bill doesn’t commit to the same kind of rights language that the Liberals promised in their platform. Instead, it declares that the government’s policy is to “further the progressive realization, for individuals on First Nation lands, of the human right to safe drinking water as protected by the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.” That covenant is a multilateral treaty adopted by the United Nations that came into force in the 1970s.

“To me, [this] is insane,” Debassige told reporters. “It’s been a progressive realization for many of our nations for decades.”

Debassige has been working on First Nations water issues for more than a decade and has been involved in negotiations over previous federal bills on the matter. She said that by excluding language like “in collaboration with First Nations” in Gull-Masty’s new legislation, the Carney government is “hiding from their obligations.” 

“We must remember that most of the drafters of Bill C-37 have never spent time in our community,” she said, citing the speedy passage of the federal Bill C-5 and the provincial Bill 5, both of which aim to “fast-track” infrastructure and mining approvals and construction. “And we’ve seen the pushback on the previous iteration of this bill. And now we see the results of that weakening of our inherent rights to pave way for economic development.” 

“I think it’s a deflection of responsibility, a fear of provinces, a fear of nation-building projects not coming through because our nations want to protect water.” 

The bill comes as tensions grow over these issues between the federal government, provincial governments and First Nations. 

Some chiefs, particularly in Treaty 8 territory, which spans northern B.C., Alberta and parts of Saskatchewan and the Northwest Territories, asked the federal government to rethink its approach. Sturgeon Lake Cree Nation’s chief said the bill didn’t meaningfully incorporate inherent and Treaty Rights to water while Mikisew Cree First Nation’s chief said the bill didn’t do enough to deal with the potential release of oilsands wastewater into rivers.

Last July, the environment ministers from Ontario and Alberta asked the federal government to “refrain” from introducing a new First Nations water bill, claiming it would “undermine competitiveness, delay project development and disproportionately harm specific provinces and territories without any quantifiable benefits to the natural environment.” 

Ontario’s Environment Minister Todd McCarthy apologized for any “confusion” the request may have caused First Nations. But First Nations have not been convinced by the apology. The Ontario government has skirted meaningful consultation with First Nations in its push to open the Ring of Fire region in northern Ontario, with significant implications for water use and sources, and broadly speed up mining approvals and development. It has also signalled its own plans to make broad changes to provincial clean water rules.

As Canada and Ontario rush to expedite major projects, including in the mining sector, First Nations have long been asking for the same expediency to pass laws to protect drinking water before shovels hit the ground. With a few days left before MPs are scheduled to rise for the summer, this bill is unlikely to become law before the fall. 

“I wish one of Canada’s major projects were to provide us clean drinking water,” Knowledge Keeper Sally Gaikezheyongai said, as she offered a prayer to begin the Tuesday press conference by the Chiefs of Ontario. “I ask the Creator to make sure that happens hopefully within my lifetime.” 

Why does Canada need a law to protect access to clean drinking water on First Nations? 

Indigenous Services Canada reports that there are 36 Indigenous communities that have been under orders for more than a year to boil their drinking water for one minute. Most of these communities are in Ontario. The longest-standing boil water advisory is for Neskantaga First Nation in northern Ontario, just south of the Ring of Fire region. It hasn’t had clean drinking water since 1995. (The federal count is not comprehensive, as some jurisdictions, such as B.C., track their own boil-water advisories in Indigenous communities.)

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau promised to end all these boil-water advisories by March 31, 2021, but did not succeed. Post-colonization, and as stated in the Indian Act, the federal government has a fiduciary obligation to ensure safe, potable drinking water for First Nations. Instead, there is a regulatory black hole for and chronic underinvestment in on-reserve water and wastewater services.

A month before Trudeau’s deadline, a government audit found that Indigenous Services Canada “did not provide the support necessary to ensure that First Nations communities have ongoing access to safe drinking water,” thus prolonging boil water advisories. 

The impacts of these failures are severe, including preventable illnesses, costly reliance on bottled water and long-term evacuations. 

Kashechewan First Nation, a community of 2,000 residents, has been entirely evacuated since January due to a catastrophic sewage pump failure. There is still no access to safe drinking water on their reserve. 

In May, Pikangikum First Nation declared a second state of emergency, a year after the original declaration, due to collapsing water and wastewater systems. The community’s only water treatment plant is operating beyond capacity, even as more than 300 homes remain without direct water service. The community’s reservoir is also at critically low levels and is losing water at a rate roughly four times greater than it can be filled.As a result, the nearly 4,000 on-reserve residents are dealing with daily water rationing and forced evening shutdowns. As wildfire season looms, Pikangikum is now suing the federal government. 

“It’s so important that we take action as a country, as First Nations leadership, to ensure that there are no more Kashechewans, that there are no more Pikangikums,” Grand Chief Alvin Fiddler of Nishnawbe Aski Nation, told reporters. 

“It’s unacceptable that this is a reality that many of our communities are being put in: to try to negotiate on big, major nation-building projects while they’re trying to make sure that their children and their youth can have access to water to drink.”

Why is the federal law to protect clean drinking water on First Nations so delayed?

There have been different iterations of this legislation, Kathleen Padulo, director of environment for the Chiefs of Ontario, told The Narwhal in a conversation before Bill C-37 was released, but none have proved durable.

Since the 1970s, the federal government has been promising to provide Indigenous communities with water and wastewater systems equal to those enjoyed by most Canadians, but no matter which party is in power, it has continuously fallen short of that goal. 

In 2013, the Stephen Harper government passed the Safe Drinking Water for First Nations Act. This law created a regulatory regime to govern water infrastructure on First Nations lands, but without any financial backing or centring Indigenous decision-making or rights. It also didn’t protect the sources of water flowing onto First Nation lands.

“It had no teeth, and it was really watered down,” Padulo said. “It was a piece of paper just floating around for years.” 

As a result, this law was met with widespread disapproval from First Nations. Several, including Neskantaga, launched a class action lawsuit in 2019, claiming “Canada has been negligent, breached its fiduciary duties, breached the honour of the Crown and breached various rights under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.”

Ottawa settled that lawsuit in 2021, agreeing to provide $1.8 billion in compensation and spend $6 billion on water infrastructure over nine years. The federal government also promised to repeal and replace the Conservative law. 

That didn’t happen until 2023 when the Trudeau government introduced Bill C-61, or the First Nations Clean Drinking Water Act. The landmark bill involved First Nations in its creation, doing so over a two-year-long consultation and co-development process. This bill established clean drinking water as a human right, set minimum standards for drinking water and wastewater on reserves and pledged funding for water-related infrastructure. This bill also created an Indigenous-led First Nations Water Commission to help implement the law and monitor its impact. 

After weeks of consultation with First Nations, the bill did not pass before Parliament was prorogued in January 2025. Then-Indigenous services minister Patty Hajdu said the delay was the fault of opposition parties. 

Padulo said they’ve been waiting for this bill to re-emerge and be passed “with the speed of light like Bill C-5” and then put it in place in communities right away. 

“What is happening here is colonization at the end of the day, that’s what it is,” Padulo said. “And Canadians not understanding that not everybody has basic human rights.”

What happens next?

Anishinabek Nation Grand Council Chief Debassige is asking the government to ensure “sufficient engagement” with First Nations as this bill goes through the parliamentary process, urging the government to move quickly from legislation to action. 

“We’re cautiously optimistic,” she said, but with the Liberals holding a majority government, “It’s going to be a difficult process.”

“Water is a human right. Full stop,” Debassige said. “We are looking to Canada to help us champion a shift from the outdated and colonial perspectives of First Nations being viewed as second-class citizens to ensuring our people can enjoy the same clean and safe drinking water guaranteed to non-First Nations across this country.” 

Gull-Masty said the government supports consultations with First Nations governing bodies to develop the many regulations that the bill authorizes. 

Ontario Regional Chief Abram Benedict told reporters that the government needs to focus on accountability to ensure First Nations communities have “confidence in the drinking water.”  

“We are calling on the federal government to move swiftly from legislation to action. The goal must not only be to eliminate advisories, but to prevent new ones from coming on,” he continued. “Legislation is only the beginning of ending these challenges.”

“Our communities have waited long enough.” 

Updated on June 16, 2026, at 8:40 p.m. ET: This story has been updated to include the amount of federal funding dedicated to building, maintaining and operating water and wastewater infrastructure in First Nations communities as part of Bill C-37.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

Summary

• After leaving cabinet late last year, former environment minister Steven Guilbeault will vacate his seat in Parliament altogether this summer.
• He sees a fundamental difference in his approach to addressing climate change and that of Prime Minister Mark Carney.
• Despite his exit, Guilbeault says he made great strides during his time in government and encourages young people to consider politics.

Steven Guilbeault says if he were asked again to leave activism for politics, “I would do it in a heartbeat.”

As he prepares to resign his seat, the former Liberal environment minister has been called the most ambitious the country has ever had. He believes his time in government was worth it — that, by being on the inside, one can achieve great things. His message to young people interested in climate action: consider the political arena.

Still, Guilbeault leaves as several major environmental policies he had a hand in developing are being rolled back or brushed aside by the government of Prime Minister Mark Carney. Guilbeault believes the prime minister thinks global markets will take care of things largely on their own. He disagrees.

Last week, two former members of Canada’s legislated advisory body on climate said Carney needs to be honest about how his policies have made the promise to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050 impossible. Guilbeault says the government is now facing two choices: keep its federal net-zero law in place and likely get sued by stakeholders for violating it, or repeal it and send a “powerful message” about how the prime minister sees the world.

Guilbeault spoke to The Narwhal for more than half an hour by phone on June 15. Reached for comment, Carney’s office said it is still committed to maintaining a path to net-zero emissions by 2050, but can’t rely solely on “restrictions and prohibitions.”

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

I want to start with an interview you gave in 2022 in The Guardian. You said, ‘I came into politics so I could continue to be an activist.’ In your recent speech in Parliament you said, ‘I fully intend to keep fighting.’ So if you needed to go in to be an activist, and now you’re coming out to be an activist, where does that leave things — is it better to be on the inside or the outside?

I think we need people both on the outside and on the inside. I would like to think that I have shown that by being on the inside, you can achieve things, you can set goals for yourself or as a party — like we, for the first time in our history, under the previous administration, have shown that through public policies, we can fight pollution and grow the economy. This has never been done before in the history of our country. 

We’ve shown that we can do great things when it comes to conservation, to improving environmental rights issues and environmental justice issues, including the right to a healthy environment in The Canadian Environmental Protection Act. Some of the work we have done using emergency orders, namely in Sarnia, Ont., with Aamjiwnaang First Nation, what we did on nature in 2022 at the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity conference in Montreal — I think it is absolutely possible to be an activist inside.

My decision to leave politics is that I feel that, certainly when it comes to climate change … I can no longer continue to have an impact. That’s my own personal assessment, and obviously different people will come to different conclusions. But I can no longer have an impact inside, and it’s time for me to go back on the outside.

People in the climate space have expressed a sense of betrayal with Prime Minister Mark Carney on climate and the environment. They say, ‘What happened to the UN climate guy?’ and ‘What happened to the guy who wrote the book on values?’ Is that a feeling you share?

I’m not sure I would put it in those words. But if you look at the work he did with the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero, it was largely based on voluntary commitments by companies, investors and financial institutions. There was really no transparency or accountability. I’m not saying it has no value, it certainly has value. We’re seeing how, globally right now, the markets are playing a really important role. Renewables are driving two times more investment than fossil fuels are, globally. One in four cars sold globally was an electric vehicle — not Europe, not Sweden or Norway, but globally. 

I could be wrong about this, but I think where the prime minister and I differ in terms of our views of what needs to be done on climate change, is that I have come to the conclusion that he thinks that the markets are going to do it. And that governments don’t have an important role to play, if only to put in place measures to attract investors and tax credits. 

I think we’re going to make some progress in Canada on taxonomy and disclosure, because the prime minister sees this as an important element to attract investment for decarbonization. But I don’t think he sees an important role for public policy, for regulations. I think we need markets to achieve what we want to achieve, but markets alone won’t get us there.

I think that’s perhaps something I had not understood before — and I suspect I’m not the only one — about his vision for change. I guess you could call it his theory of change, when it comes to fighting climate change.

It took several years for environment and climate policies to be dreamed up, consulted on, put into legislation or regulations and enacted. Relatively speaking, it’s been lightspeed to tear many of them down again over the past year. Why haven’t they proved more durable?

Well, it’s always easier to destroy than it is to build. That’s true of regulations, it’s unfortunately true of many things. [That’s] number one.

Number two: many of these things, despite what has been said publicly, are still in force. The clean electricity regulations are still in place. Many of the changes we said we would make on methane [emission reductions], the regulations that apply right now in Canada, are still the federal methane regulations that have been approved. So the [methane allowances] in the agreement with Alberta, they will need to go through the process of making regulatory changes, which is more complicated than switching something on and off.

But you’re right, by the looks of it, this is where we’re heading. And yes, you’re right, it was long and painstakingly difficult at times to put these things in place. But that’s the price to pay to live in a democracy. A duly elected government in a democracy can change things that previous governments have done, and that’s something we have to accept.

Do you think the days of Canada’s net-zero law — committing us to negating greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 and setting increasingly stringent targets to get there — are numbered?

I think a lot of people don’t realize that our 2030 and 2035 targets are not voluntary targets in Canada, they’re legally binding, and there will be consequences if Canada doesn’t meet those targets. It’s going to become painfully clear in the very near future that we won’t be able to achieve those targets, regardless of what the government continues to say. I mean, you can be committed to those targets and not have any chance of meeting them, so it’s a bit disingenuous to say that we are committed. 

I think they’re going to be faced with two difficult choices: either they keep the climate accountability act in place, and then what is likely going to happen is that the federal government is going to get sued by different stakeholders for not abiding by federal law. Or they have to repeal it, which would send a pretty powerful message to Canadians about how little this government is concerned with climate change.

If they did decide to repeal the law, to what would you compare that?

Well, with the United States, we would become one of a handful of countries in the world to basically turn our back on the Paris Agreement. That’s in effect what it would mean. And I suspect that you know it’s true that, right now, when you look at public opinion research, Canadians care more about other things than they care about climate, but they still care about climate change.

You talked about the prime minister putting faith in a market-based solution to climate action. Do you think that idea extends to his position on international agreements like the Paris Agreement, to keep global warming below 2 degrees Celsius?

That’s a good question. I mean, it is interesting that when you look at the spring economic statement, Canada renewed its climate finance commitment under the Paris Agreement, [committing billions toward climate change adaptation and climate-related businesses in “vulnerable countries”]. That is one area where Canada is still doing pretty good. We’ve slightly increased our climate finance package for the first time ever, we’ve set a goal of mobilizing funds with the private sector. The UK has reduced their climate fund, France has, the United States has. From that context, the fact that Canada would slightly increase theirs is, in and of itself, a small victory. And we’ll take all the victories we can take right now, right? 

The honest answer to your question right now is, I don’t know what his views are on that. But we may infer from our climate finance commitment that it is still something that’s important to him.

At the environment committee recently, Catherine Abreu and Simon Donner said the government didn’t want to hear from the net-zero advisory body. Does the Carney government not listen to experts?

We can still see that scientists and experts have a voice, and they can still express their opinion, which was a big difference from the Stephen Harper years.

I do think that there is a negative bias by this government towards regulations, and regulations are perceived by many as being some form of impediment to free markets and impeding investment. I would disagree with that analysis. You go back to 2024, for example, Canada came in second in the G20 for foreign direct investment in comparison to the size of our economy, while we were full-speed ahead deploying our climate change plan. So it seems that foreign investors didn’t have a problem with coming to Canada to invest, despite the fact that we had an aggressive plan to fight climate change. This idea that these two things are in opposition to one another doesn’t seem to stand the test of facts.

When you say the government holds a negative bias, are you talking about Prime Minister Carney specifically, or members of his cabinet, or senior officials or all of the above?

From what I’ve been able to observe, I think it’s the case that there are many people who feel this way, some on the political side, some on the bureaucracy side. I’m not saying everyone agrees with that idea, but certainly around the prime minister there are many, which is why we’re seeing such a push towards deregulation, because many people in positions of influence are pushing for this agenda. 

Unfortunately, we’re putting at risk the health of Canadians with some of the changes that are being proposed — whether it’s on impact assessment reform or pesticides management. I think we will likely quickly come to the conclusion that we’re doing so at a greater risk for Canadians.

Is there someone in particular you’re thinking of around the prime minister who is pushing for that deregulation?

I think it’s larger than one or two people. At least with people who have important portfolios on the economic side, I think it is a general perception.

What’s your message to young people now, who are just being introduced to the climate movement? They see you deciding to quit politics, talking about the backsliding that’s going on. They see you talking about getting into it in the 1990s. Maybe they’re a bit skeptical that there is the same sort of urgency and hope as there was in that decade. What’s your message to them?

My first message would be that we need good people in politics. I was there for almost seven years. In working with many others, I was able to achieve many things. There’s no way I could have helped to convince 196 countries to protect 30 per cent of the planet in Montreal in 2022 if I had stayed at Équiterre. Just not possible. 

The single-use plastics ban. My first bill in parliament was the creation of the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. I was talking about the inclusion of a right to a healthy environment in the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, new regulations on [toxic effluent from] the oilsands — we were able to do a lot of things. If I have to do it all over again, I would do it in a heartbeat.

I have colleagues who have, despite what is happening, decided to stay and fight the good fight from the inside. I think it’s a highly personal call. 

I was coming to the conclusion that by staying inside, I was becoming a tool to justify some of the things the government is doing, which I find to be unjustifiable. I was hearing from some people, ‘Well, if Steven is still there, then it’s probably not so bad.’ That’s one of the reasons I feel that it was time for me to leave. 

But what I would tell those young folks is, go into politics. If this is something you’re interested in, it’s an incredibly important arena to push for change.

What’s next for you?

I have not figured that out. I’m going with [the Students on Ice Foundation] in the Arctic this summer, 40 young Canadians, for almost two weeks. After that I’m going to start looking at what my options are. But I know that I’m going to keep working on issues of climate change and sustainability and nature, one way or the other.

After this story was published, a spokesperson in Prime Minister Mark Carney’s office sent a statement to The Narwhal that said the government is “pairing smart regulation with major investment, partnership and market-based solutions” to deliver emissions reductions and tackle affordability, but added “we cannot rely on restrictions and prohibitions alone.” The spokesperson also highlighted the government’s methane reduction agreement with Alberta, $4-billion nature strategy and electricity strategy.

“As he has throughout his career, Prime Minister Carney will continue to take a pragmatic and balanced approach to climate action. One that cuts emissions, achieves Canada’s climate goals and strengthens the Canadian economy. Canada has been consistent in our commitment to maintain a path to net-zero by 2050, and we are taking practical steps to achieve real results,” the spokesperson said.

Updated on June 17, 2026, at 9:18 a.m. ET: This story was updated to add a statement from the prime minister’s office that was sent to The Narwhal after publication.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

Summary

• The government under Prime Minister Mark Carney has “repealed or weakened virtually every climate policy and regulation that Canada had developed in the last decade,” a former member of Canada’s Net-Zero Advisory Body told MPs.
• Two former members of the body said last week they were left uninformed of new policy directions on fossil fuel development and emissions reductions while their previous advice was ignored.
• Canada’s goal of reaching net-zero emissions — and helping to slow the effects of climate change — by 2050 is now “out of reach,” they said.

The consequences of Prime Minister Mark Carney’s methodical cuts to Canada’s environmental rules are not being communicated honestly to the public, two former government advisors say. 

Climate scientist Simon Donner and environmental advocate Catherine Abreu are both former members of a legislated advisory body of climate scientists and policy experts. Last week, they shared their experience on that body with MPs, saying Carney’s government repeatedly kept them in the dark while it gutted one rule after another — from scrapping the consumer carbon price to setting aside clean electricity rules, ditching the oil and gas emissions cap, pausing electric vehicle mandates and signing a deal with Alberta that delayed rules for methane gas leakage and weakened requirements for industry to pay for its carbon emissions.

The government refused offers to hear their advice and cancelled a high-level meeting at the last minute, Donner, the former co-chair of the Net-Zero Advisory Body and a University of British Columbia professor who runs a Climate and Coastal Ecosystem Laboratory, told the House of Commons environment committee on June 9. 

Donner and Abreu, the former executive director of Climate Action Network Canada and now the executive director of the International Climate Politics Hub, were there to brief MPs from multiple parties on the state of the advisory body.

“We were not informed of policy decisions underway, nor asked to provide advice on those decisions,” Donner said about the government’s myriad changes while he was co-chair.

That included their assessment that the Carney government’s actions were trashing any chance of Canada reaching its goal of negating its planet-heating carbon pollution, which would slow its contribution to the climate crisis that is wreaking havoc on Canadians’ health. That judgment has since been echoed by the Canadian Climate Institute.

Abreu also felt Carney’s enthusiastic support for the oil and gas industry is being downplayed. The industry is the economic sector with the highest amount of emissions and despite Canada’s climate commitments, those emissions are climbing ever higher, offsetting declines in other economic sectors. 

“The shredding of environmental policy that this government has undertaken means that Canada is now on track to violate its own law and to fail to attain net-zero emissions by 2050,” Abreu said.

Carbon pollution worsens climate change, which is fuelling floods and wildfires that can lead to evacuations, toxic smoke and heat waves that smother cities and trigger asthma and mental health issues. Fumes and exhaust from fossil fuel-powered vehicles, power plants and gas appliances are connected with heart disease, strokes, chronic lung diseases, cancer and tens of thousands of premature deaths a year.

Abreu said the government didn’t consult the advisory body before releasing its Climate Competitiveness Strategy, which focused on protecting the global competitiveness of Canada’s oil and gas sector. That strategy “unwound much of the policies that we had advised on in previous years,” Abreu said.

And, she said, because the government designed that document to be a “strategy” and not a formal “plan,” it sidestepped a legal requirement to consider submissions from the advisory body on the plan’s merits.

Canadian oil producers are expected to make as much as $100 billion in profits this year as a result of the Iran war, according to the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. The government is not contemplating a windfall tax on those profits, Abreu noted, which would require companies to hand over a portion of that excess profit to public coffers. Instead, the government is moving to further subsidize the industry. 

This spring, Carney formalized a tax credit for companies that use technology to capture carbon dioxide for the purposes of pumping more oil out of the ground. Former environment minister Steven Guilbeault, who announced he would resign his seat last month over the government’s policies, initially quit cabinet in part over the government’s plan to offer this new subsidy.

“Transparently communicating to Canadians, ‘This is a decision we’re making, here’s why and here are the protections that you’re going to lose as a result,’ is critical, and we’re not having that kind of open conversation,” Abreu told the MPs.

“Instead, things are being obfuscated with misleading language, including claims that we will continue to meet our net-zero goal, when clearly that has been put out of reach with recent decisions, and with misleading language like ‘decarbonized’ oil and gas, which is something that I hear this government say regularly, and is actually just a complete contradiction in terms.”

Environment and Climate Change Minister Julie Dabrusin’s spokesperson Keean Nembhard said the Climate Competitiveness Strategy contained measures to drive down emissions, including methane rules, carbon pricing, tax credits, critical minerals support and efforts to mobilize capital for the low-carbon transition. He said the government’s nature, electricity, and auto strategies are also meant to help cut carbon pollution.

“Our government has been clear that fighting climate change, protecting communities and building Canada are top priorities. Climate change is one of the defining challenges of our time and Canadians expect us to meet this challenge head-on,” he said.

The Narwhal also reached out to the prime minister’s office for comment but did not receive a response before publication.

Government ignored research, cancelled meetings with experts

The Net-Zero Advisory Body is authorized to include up to 15 people, but dropped to just six members last summer following Carney’s election, Donner said.

“It became very difficult for us to produce any work of value,” he said. 

The advisory body’s website currently lists five members. In April, Minister Dabrusin issued a statement that the government would be “implementing a series of updates” to the advisory body, as a result of “last year’s departures” as well as a “shift in focus” to “investment and growth in a low-carbon economy.”

The June briefing on the Net-Zero Advisory Body was the first that the House of Commons Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development has held. The committee’s job is to study and report on matters relating to a range of different environmental departments, agencies and laws, and has recently examined things like single-use plastics, carbon pricing and fresh water.

It’s one of several parliamentary committees in the House of Commons and Senate and is made up of MPs from parties with official status, which is based on the number of seats they hold. Although the Green Party and NDP aren’t committee members, Conservative MPs offered time for those parties’ questions. 

The former advisory body members gave opening statements and then answered questions for roughly an hour. Their testimony focused on the Canadian Net-Zero Emissions Accountability Act, a federal law passed in 2021, which mandates that Canada reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. The law requires the government to set increasingly stringent targets for lowering emissions and publish its plans to achieve them.

The law also establishes the Net-Zero Advisory Body of which Donner and Abreu were formerly members. It’s a kind of government climate council that provides independent advice to the environment minister on how to achieve net-zero emissions. The United Kingdom, South Korea and Australia have similar legislated climate councils. 

Under Canada’s law, the government is required to take into account “submissions provided by the advisory body” when coming up with an emissions reduction plan.

Abreu and Donner both joined the advisory body in 2021, but resigned last December after becoming frustrated with the cold shoulder they said they were receiving from Carney’s government. 

Last summer, the advisory board volunteered to brief the government on industrial carbon pricing and equivalency agreements with the provinces, Donner said, but he received “no response” from Carney’s office, and an acknowledgement but no appointment from Energy and Natural Resources Minister Tim Hodgson’s office.

The last straw was when the government proposed a deal with Alberta that weakens industrial carbon pricing, delays restrictions on industrial methane gas and significantly lowers the ambition of a carbon capture proposal from industry, while paving the way for a million-barrel-per-day oil pipeline to the west coast. 

Donner said the environment minister’s office cancelled a briefing with the advisory body scheduled for the day after the Canada-Alberta Memorandum of Understanding was released in November. 

After that, he said, he concluded the group’s work “had become performative.”

“You can’t be saying these deals are still compatible with net-zero by 2050. They’re not. The [Alberta] deal is not compatible with it,” he said.

“Just be honest with Canadians about this. If you’re going to pass deals like this, be honest about the implications.”

‘The oldest, most boring conversation I can possibly imagine’ about pipelines

Abreu told MPs the government has “repealed or weakened virtually every climate policy and regulation that Canada had developed in the last decade,” but with “no alternative policies or pathways being put in place.” 

She argued Carney’s killing of the consumer carbon tax on his first day in office was a decision based on “irresponsible and inaccurate rhetorical politics.” 

The prime minister’s decision to ditch the proposed oil and gas emissions cap opens the door for the government to help build projects, she argued, which will grow the sector’s emissions. 

And delaying the zero-emissions vehicle mandates has coincided with a drop in sales of new electric vehicles, she pointed out, “right at the moment when soaring gas prices are hurting Canadians who are struggling to fuel their gas guzzlers.”

The government’s proposal this spring to overhaul fossil fuel and nuclear project oversight, habitat preservation and species at risk protection and create “federal economic zones” where certain developments can be “pre-approved,” also undermines some of Canada’s longest-standing environmental protections, Abreu said.

She also called out Carney’s “national electricity strategy,” which sets aside clean electricity regulations and allows for new gas-fuelled power plants — which “makes a mockery of the abundant clean energy resources that should be a very celebrated economic advantage in this country.”

Instead, the country is stuck once again “having the oldest, most boring conversation I can possibly imagine, about how we’re going to build another pipeline,” she said.

“We’ve been having the same conversation the entire time that I’ve been in my professional career. It’s sad.”

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

Summary

• Canada’s updated national building code puts limits on new buildings’ greenhouse gas emissions, though provinces can choose whether or not to implement them.
• The new rules could reduce the use of natural gas, a fossil fuel, to heat Canadian buildings.
• Documents obtained by The Narwhal reveal an effort by the Canadian Gas Association to lobby against the changes.

Natural gas companies lobbied against federal building guidelines that could help weaken the fossil fuel industry’s iron grip on Canadian communities, according to documents obtained by The Narwhal. 

In December 2025, a federal-provincial body published a new national building code that, for the first time, limits the volume of greenhouse gases that can be emitted by a building, whether from a gas-burning stove, heating system or hot-water tank. As they developed the code, officials held years of consultations with groups including the gas industry, to hear thoughts on changes that could set a precedent that limits natural gas use in new builds.

These limits are called “operational greenhouse gas emissions provisions.” In practice, they mean builders have to consider whether the heating, cooling and cooking systems they outfit a home with will produce emissions that push it beyond that threshold.

Natural gas, a fossil fuel mostly made up of the greenhouse gas methane, represents almost half the energy used in residential buildings in Canada — and almost two-thirds of their carbon pollution. Burning natural gas to heat Canadian homes and water is a big reason why buildings here are the third-largest climate polluter by economic sector, after other fossil fuel-dependent industries like transportation and oil and gas production.

Natural gas also poses threats to public health. While the industry takes steps to limit human exposure, research shows oil and gas fracking can impact birth and respiratory outcomes. When gas is used in the house, it exposes the occupants to air pollutants. When it’s liquefied for export, that’s often done at a facility that flares off excess gas, which also releases pollutants that affect human health. Methane itself, which traps heat in the atmosphere and drives climate change, is on Canada’s toxic substances list.

Coupled with the government’s push to fast-track large-scale housing projects nationwide, the new code could represent a big change in how many Canadians rely on fossil fuels in their homes. That is, if provincial governments play along. The new guidelines aren’t likely to be enforced nationwide anytime soon. It’s up to the provinces to pick and choose what parts to implement, if any; Ontario’s building code, for example, hasn’t been updated in years. 

What’s more, the new limits may not even impact new gas hookups for buildings at all: the code offers a range of standards, and the least restrictive still accommodate “current construction practices using natural gas for space and water heating,” according to the documents, which were obtained through access to information law.

None of that, however, stopped the lobby group Canadian Gas Association from complaining about the new rules.

The industry group has a board of directors made up of executives at companies in the business of distributing gas. During the consultations, it “raised concerns about newly introduced operational greenhouse gas emissions provisions and their potential impacts on housing affordability and energy costs,” according to a January 2026 briefing note for Canada’s deputy minister of housing, infrastructure and communities.

According to the industry group, the rules “could effectively ban natural gas, increase housing and energy costs and favour electrification without considering affordability or infrastructure feasibility,” the briefing note continued. 

The building code development process is governed by a federal-provincial body called the Canadian Board for Harmonized Construction Codes, while the National Research Council provides support once the codes are developed. Both of those organizations were “aware” of the gas lobby group’s concerns and were “working to address them,” the briefing note said.

The Narwhal asked the office of federal Housing and Infrastructure Minister Gregor Robertson how the government planned on addressing the industry’s lobbying. A spokesperson for the ministry responded that it “is one of several government institutions that have been lobbied on the issue of building codes, as per private groups’ and individuals’ right to communicate with elected or appointed government officials,” adding that records of that lobbying are publicly available. The department “will continue to work with its partners at all levels of government and all industries to help ensure that Canadian infrastructure and housing reflect the diverse needs of communities across the country, while continuing to support Canada’s commitments on climate mitigation and resilience.”

The Canadian Gas Association did not respond to a request for comment.

Cities and provinces say natural gas limits will hinder homebuilding

If provinces enforce the highest performance levels in the building code, it’s possible natural gas hookups wouldn’t pass muster, according to Kevin Lockhart, the director of the Pembina Institute’s buildings program.

But it was a “mischaracterization to call it a ban,” he said, since builders have different options in the code to help them meet different aspects and building requirements.

The difficulty of reducing emissions in older buildings is a key reason limiting natural gas in new buildings is important, Betsy Agar, director of buildings policy at Efficiency Canada at Carleton University, said. 

New builds are a tiny portion of Canada’s overall building stock, she said, “less than two per cent of square floor area every year, and 80 per cent of our buildings that exist today will still exist in 2050. Those are the ones that are hard to electrify.”

The enormous task of retrofitting older buildings is one reason it’s difficult to justify rules that would let brand-new construction continue to install natural gas, when other options are available, Agar said. Especially since infrastructure and agreements that allow gas companies to access land and customers are proving hard to dislodge.

B.C. has previously strived for ambitious building code standards. But in Vancouver, where an estimated three-fifths of carbon pollution comes from burning gas for heat, city council voted in May to pause rules that tracked emissions and limited natural gas heating in new homes. 

Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim argued that allowing gas heating in new homes would catalyze new home construction, but critics say the city is rolling back climate action.

In Ontario, the Doug Ford government has also been a strong defender of natural gas as an energy source delivered to both buildings for heating, and to power plants to generate electricity. Early in its tenure, the Progressive Conservatives cancelled hundreds of renewable energy contracts and then awarded new contracts to natural gas plants in 2022.

In late 2023, the province’s energy regulator found gas hookups in new builds may not be the most economical option for the ratepayers that foot the bill for those connections. The regulator ruled developers should pick up that cost, urging them towards cleaner and more cost-effective systems. 

Within days, and after much communication with Enbridge Gas, the Ford government vowed to overturn the ruling, and made good on that promise in August 2024.

Agar said in most cases, industry is “really resistant to strict regulations.” Building codes that drive toward electrification, she said, have particularly been in industry’s crosshairs.

“There’s just been this visceral response to it,” Agar said. But, she added, “the sooner that you adopt these codes, it means that people are living in better, more efficient, more comfortable homes, then all those new builds that we’re building don’t need to be retrofitted years down the line.”

Build Canada Homes will ‘encourage’ energy efficiency — but feds still support natural gas

The January briefing note was prepared for a meeting scheduled between the deputy minister of housing, infrastructure and communities and two members of the Canadian Gas Association, documents show. At that meeting, the deputy minister was expected to ask gas companies about their alternative proposals to the building code rules.

None of the lobby group’s proposals listed in the briefing note were focused on eliminating gas access in new builds. They included “reducing emissions from the gas supply stream,” meaning reducing methane escaping from pipelines that deliver the gas to markets. Another was “hybrid heating,” or pairing an electric heat pump with a natural gas furnace. 

There was also a proposal to blend more “renewable natural gas” — methane captured from food waste and compost, for example — into the system, which may reduce underground extraction of natural gas, but won’t necessarily make a big dent in emissions. And there was mention of blending in hydrogen, which is commonly produced with fossil fuels. There was no comment in the briefing notes about how the government received these proposals.

Build Canada Homes, the federal agency meant to respond to the housing crisis, has said it will “favour projects that demonstrate energy efficiency and climate performance.” The briefing note said Build Canada Homes “will encourage proponents to meet higher energy efficiency tiers” of the building code, but only “where practical and cost-effective.”

Lockhart, at the Pembina Institute, said the federal government could try harder to “drive higher performance in buildings.” That could include making emissions standards in the building code a formal prerequisite for any new homes that receive Build Canada funding.

It’s difficult to predict how Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government will respond to industry’s displeasure with the code. His election platform promised to phase out fossil fuel use in government-owned buildings by 2030, as well as ensure “new federal buildings” would adopt the top performance tiers for energy efficiency and emissions reductions. 

His platform also committed to “reforming and simplifying national building codes,” a promise reiterated in his spring economic update as a way to speed up construction. 

The spring also saw the release of the Carney government’s electricity strategy, which predicts at least a doubling of electricity demand, in part to address the electrification of buildings.

At the same time, the electricity strategy has an entire page devoted to “Natural gas’ strategic role,” where it describes the fossil fuel’s use for electricity generation in glowing terms like “reliable,” “affordable,” “secure,” “flexible” and “abundant.”

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Summary

• Last week, Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government proposed major changes to the federal assessment process for mining, oil and gas and other infrastructure projects.
• The proposed changes include shifting assessments from an agency under the federal environment minister to regulators that report to the natural resources minister.
• Former ministers, First Nations and environmental advocates are criticizing the proposal, some calling it a more significant rollback of environmental law than was seen under former prime minister Stephen Harper.

Last year, Prime Minister Mark Carney established an office tasked with fast-tracking handpicked major industrial projects. Now, he says that’s not enough. He has a new proposal on the table meant to roll out the red carpet for all projects requiring federal approval, including pipelines, mines, transmission lines and other infrastructure.

The proposal, unveiled last week, would create “federal economic zones” where certain developments can be “pre-approved,” and provide exceptions to several rules governing fossil fuel and nuclear oversight, habitat preservation, species at risk protection and major project reviews.

It would fundamentally change the way the country scrutinizes industrial development and consults with Indigenous Peoples, in some cases shifting reviews at an agency under the purview of the environment minister over to federal bodies that report to the natural resources minister.

The government outlined its plan in two discussion papers, but it will need to flesh out the details and formally introduce them as part of new legislation, before they can be implemented in law. The Liberals are now able to pass legislation much easier, after they secured a Parliamentary majority following April’s byelections and the addition of five floor-crossing MPs to their caucus.

The House of Commons is on a two-week break, scheduled to return May 25. Meanwhile, the proposal is open for public comment through June 7. 

Here’s what you need to know.

Who wanted this change? Who didn’t?

The government says the alterations are necessary so Canada can better compete with other countries for investment dollars, and strengthen the Indigenous consultation process. It said the process to build things is “often slow, expensive and confusing” and the government must “go further to streamline review and approvals processes.”

The Canadian Chamber of Commerce, which represents businesses across the country, also believes the government’s fast-tracking regime has “not gone far enough” and is hoping Carney continues to “peel back some of the red tape layers that have been holding back business success.”

Canada’s oil and gas industry has consistently advocated since Carney took office for his government to overhaul environmental assessments to turbocharge fossil fuel growth. Industry executives have personally pushed this position despite the industry enjoying big profits off the war in Iran, and despite the scientific conclusion that carbon pollution, of which the oil and gas industry is the largest contributor in Canada, is furthering destructive climate change that is leading to myriad health problems and premature death for Canadians.

Two former Liberal environment ministers have harshly criticized Carney’s proposal. Liberal MP Steven Guilbeault, who was the federal environment minister from 2021 to 2025, told the Toronto Star Carney’s plan is “worse” than the changes under former Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper, which resulted in some high-profile legal challenges. Former Liberal MP Catherine McKenna, who held the same post from 2015 to 2019, told the Canadian Press Carney’s proposal will lead to a “lack of trust” and lawsuits, ultimately making the project approval process slower, not faster.

Ecojustice, an environmental law charity, has described the changes as potentially ushering in “the biggest rollback of environmental protections in a generation.” The Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs, which represents 63 First Nations in that province, said it raises “serious concerns that Canada is moving toward a system where speed takes precedence over Treaty obligations, environmental stewardship and First Nations consent.”

The government wants to create ‘federal economic zones’ where developments are ‘pre-approved’

Carney’s government wants to legalize “federal economic zones” which it says could include areas designated for energy production and transmission, industrial regions, transportation and telecommunications. 

Inside these zones, the government would “pre-approve” certain developments, subject to conditions, and exempt projects from requiring individual environmental reviews — instead just requiring one overarching assessment.

It said the zones, and the activities allowed in them, would be “clearly defined.” Consultation with Indigenous Peoples would be a “key part” of the process, it added, including on determining the conditions for development inside the zones. The agreement of provinces is also “essential,” it said.

“This co-operation between federal and provincial governments would allow projects to be fast-tracked under both federal and provincial regimes,” reads the discussion paper. 

Sound familiar? Ontario passed similar legislation last year

A provincial regime is already in place in Ontario, after Premier Doug Ford’s government passed Bill 5 last year. The bill established the similar-sounding Special Economic Zones Act. Inside Ontario’s economic zones, the government can select certain proponents and projects, and exempt them from some municipal by-laws and provincial laws, including environmental protections. 

Critics have said Ontario’s law threatens wetlands, watersheds, peatlands and endangered species, and the Indigenous communities who rely on them. It’s subject to a court challenge from First Nations, asking for the law to be found unconstitutional.

The federal economic zones would be enabled through regional assessments, which are already an approach used by the Impact Assessment Agency of Canada to examine the cumulative effects of development in a given area. 

There is currently an ongoing federal regional assessment in the Ring of Fire, the mineral-rich area in the James Bay Lowlands known as Bakitanaamowin Aki, or “the Breathing Lands,” and Mammamattawa, or “many rivers coming together,” by the First Nations that call it home. 

Days after passing Bill 5, Ford said he would designate the Ring of Fire a special economic zone under Ontario law “as quickly as possible.” But in March this year, in a sudden shift in tone, Ford said he didn’t “need” to use these powers anymore to develop the area due to partnerships with several, but not all, First Nations communities in the region.

The Ontario government has long spoken about the region becoming a major mining hub. But an interim Ring of Fire regional assessment report has pointed to the need for environmental monitoring in the area’s boreal forest and peatlands, and the need for communities to urgently access health care. 

The provincial government, meanwhile, has been withholding scientific data and funding as part of the assessment process, and is not at the table with the First Nations and federal government representatives seeing it through, The Narwhal has reported.

New rules would change the role of the federal environmental review agency

Carney’s proposal would remove the ability of the Impact Assessment Agency of Canada to examine any pipeline projects that cross provincial or national borders, as well as any transmission lines or “offshore renewable energy projects.”

The agency, accountable to Environment, Climate Change and Nature Minister Julie Dabrusin, examines projects for sustainability, environmental protection and Indigenous Rights. It carries out its assessments “grounded in sound science, rigorous process and due diligence,” according to its website.

“Does Canada need to weaken its environmental laws to allow projects to proceed? No,” the agency declares on a frequently asked questions page. “Do federal policies prevent LNG, oil or pipeline projects from moving forward in Canada? No.”

Carney’s government is now of the opinion that issues like “poor coordination between government departments” are slowing down projects like pipelines. The government is proposing to shift assessments of certain projects away from the agency and over to two regulators that report to Natural Resources Minister Tim Hodgson. 

The job of reviewing all cross-border pipelines, transmission lines and offshore renewables would go to the Canada Energy Regulator, while the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission would handle project reviews related to nuclear and uranium projects.

The government would also have the power to declare major pipelines “in the public interest,” before the energy regulator is required to complete its review of the project’s conditions or where the pipe would actually be laid.

At the same time, the government is proposing that the Impact Assessment Agency become the home of a new “Crown consultation hub” that would “ensure that each Indigenous group affected by a major project goes through one clear and coordinated consultation process for each project.” 

It is also proposing to assign the federal review coordinator at the agency the job of ensuring project assessments and federal permits “stay on track.” The government said it would change the law to ensure project reviews and permit reviews “happen at the same time” and that a federal decision would take no longer than one year.

Sound familiar again? Carney isn’t the first leader to try to fast-track industrial projects

Carney’s proposal is reminiscent of a shift that happened under Harper’s government, which tried to accelerate environmental assessments by moving more oil and gas oversight to the energy regulator’s predecessor, the National Energy Board, in 2012.

Years later, the National Energy Board came under scrutiny after the Federal Court of Appeal quashed the government’s approval of the Trans Mountain oil pipeline expansion project, saying the board’s review of the project was flawed. The former Northern Gateway pipeline proposal also had its federal permits overturned by the Federal Court.

Former prime minister Justin Trudeau’s government passed the Impact Assessment Act and Canadian Energy Regulator Act, collectively through Bill C-69, allowing the government to consider the impact of natural resource projects on issues like climate change. But a Supreme Court of Canada decision in 2023 found the assessment scheme “largely unconstitutional,” forcing Trudeau’s government to introduce a revised version of the law in 2024.

There will be new exemptions to Canada’s species at risk law and fish permits

Carney’s government wants to change “some federal laws” that it argued can make the regulatory process “slow, repetitive and less flexible.” One of these appears to be the Species At Risk Act, a federal law passed in 2002 that is meant to prevent species extinction and help with population recovery. 

The law has a clause known as the “jeopardy test,” that restricts permits for an activity affecting a species or its critical habitat, unless the government believes the activity “will not jeopardize the survival or recovery of the species.”

Carney’s proposal would give the government the power to exempt projects from the application of this test. It said the power would be “limited” and have a “high threshold to be met,” would have to be in the “public interest” and would have to come after the proponent has made “all reasonable efforts” to avoid impacts.

The government also wants to offer more flexibility for permits that impact fish and fish habitat, when it comes to compensating for environmental harm. And it would allow “some early construction activities to start” before the government decides on the merits of a project, “if necessary permits are approved.”

Carney’s proposal also allows ministers to adjust certain conditions of a project assessment “in exceptional circumstances” and “adjust environmental conditions for projects of national interest, when needed.”

And it would hand the environment minister the power to issue a single federal document for certain projects that would include all federal decisions “required for a project to move forward.” It said experts in different departments would still review the project and provide advice, and enforcement would still be handled by the departments responsible. 

The changes come after Ford’s government in Ontario also removed the province’s Endangered Species Act and replaced it with the Species Conservation Act this year. That has had the effect of removing protection from many species.

After Ontario’s change, some threatened fish and birds are now only protected by federal laws. 

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Summary

• In briefing notes, officials with Canada’s natural resources department compared a federal office to a White House council tasked with stewarding energy projects forward.
• Canada’s Major Projects Office is meant to speed up developments including natural gas and mining.
• A First Nations leader noted Canada’s different constitutional framework, while environmental experts and advocates cautioned against following Trump’s push for “energy dominance.”

Prime Minister Mark Carney’s special office for speeding up major projects “operates similarly” to U.S. President Donald Trump’s energy “tiger team,” according to internal Canadian government records.

The comparison between Carney’s Major Projects Office and the president’s National Energy Dominance Council, or NEDC, are contained in a briefing note for Canadian Energy Minister Tim Hodgson that was obtained by The Narwhal through an access to information request.

“The NEDC operates similarly to the Major Projects Office,” the briefing note from Natural Resources Canada reads, “providing support to advance projects efficiently and address issues that may impede progress. It is a small group of officials working at the centre of government to facilitate decision-making.”

According to a description by one of its senior advisers, the U.S. council, which was created within the Executive Office of the president, is conceived as a “tiger team,” or a group of specialists hired to solve a specific problem. It offers “concierge, white glove service” to get mining and fossil fuel projects approved fast, the advisor said.

It’s chaired by U.S. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, who has close ties to oil and gas producers, and the team has been involved in promoting mining, natural gas and a pipeline in Alaska. The briefing note shows Hodgson was scheduled to meet with Burgum last October.

Six months after Trump’s council was formed, Carney launched the Major Projects Office with a mandate to “streamline and accelerate” regulatory approvals for “nation-building” projects. The office is backed by the Privy Council Office, the department that supports the prime minister and cabinet.

So far, the prime minister has referred five mining projects and two natural gas projects to the office, as well as others in nuclear, electricity, ports and roads. He put Dawn Farrell, the former CEO of the oil pipeline company Trans Mountain, in charge.

During a visit to an energy conference in Houston in March, Hodgson remarked on the closeness of his office’s relationship with Burgum, and said, “the U.S. wants to achieve energy dominance. We support you in that view.”

The Narwhal approached Hodgson after he gave a speech at a First Nations Major Projects Coalition conference in Toronto on April 30, to ask about the comparison his department made with Trump’s team. The minister, while walking through the conference and chatting with an attendee, twice avoided taking questions, saying he was too busy. Another official suggested contacting his office.

A spokesperson for Natural Resources Canada said the comparison between the Major Projects Office and the U.S. council “was intended as a high-level description of function — not a statement of equivalence in mandate, governance or approach.”

The department also noted Canada’s “distinct constitutional, legal and policy framework that reflects our values and obligations” and said Canada’s office is “not limited to a single industry or sector.”

Treaty 8 Grand Chief says comparisons between Canada and U.S. approaches to development should be ‘treated very carefully’

Carney has pitched the Major Projects Office as working “in partnership” with Indigenous Peoples. He held summits last year with First Nations, Inuit and Métis rights holders. The office’s Indigenous Advisory Council is meant to help guide its work.

Grand Chief Trevor Mercredi, of Treaty 8 First Nations of Alberta, sits on the Major Projects Office’s Indigenous Advisory Council. He reacted to the comparison by noting that Canada’s different constitutional framework, including the Crown’s obligations to First Nations, means “speed cannot come at the expense of Treaty Rights.”

“What I can say is that any comparison between the Major Projects Office and a U.S. energy permitting model has to be treated very carefully. Canada operates within a different constitutional framework,” Mercredi said, including Treaty Rights, land claims and the duty to consult. “The Crown’s obligations to First Nations cannot be treated as permitting issues or obstacles to be managed around.”

He said there is value in the Major Projects Office if it improves government transparency and coordination and ensures First Nations are meaningfully involved in decisions that affect their lands, waters and Treaty Rights.

“But if the purpose is to simply move projects faster by narrowing, bypassing or compressing Crown obligations, that would be a serious concern,” he said.

Mercredi said his role on the Indigenous Advisory Council does not replace direct consultation with rights-holding nations and doesn’t satisfy the Crown’s legal obligations.

For Treaty 8 nations, he said, the issue isn’t whether Canada can build major projects — it’s whether Canada will honour treaties, respect First Nations jurisdiction and ensure decisions are made with “proper consultation, accommodation, environmental protection and real participation by the nations whose territories are affected.”

Canada’s Bill C-5 faces strong opposition, and a lawsuit

The government passed the Building Canada Act, part of Bill C-5, in June 2025, cementing a process in law to name projects in the “national interest.”

It has seen strong opposition from some Indigenous communities, as well as public interest groups, who argue it paves the way for the government to circumvent oversight that’s meant to protect the environment, public health and scientific integrity.

The Quebec Environmental Law Centre has launched a legal action asking the courts to strike down the law. The group announced April 27 it had gathered 11 other organizations who seek to intervene in the lawsuit.

The law centre’s executive director Geneviève Paul, reacting to the documents from the natural resources department, said decisions made behind closed doors are not in the interest of Canadians.

“The government of Canada needs to act responsibly and defend our institutions, not follow authoritarian trends and copy the jurisdictions which are dismantling the protections we need to move forward safely,” she said.

Keith Stewart, senior energy strategist at Greenpeace Canada, said it was “telling” that the federal department itself was comparing the two offices.

“I think many Canadians who voted for an ‘elbows up’ agenda would be surprised to learn that our natural resources minister went to Houston [in March] to tell Americans that he wants to help the Trump administration achieve energy dominance, which is code for expanding fossil fuels at any cost,” Stewart said.

Updated on May 5, 2026, at 11:30 a.m. ET: This story has been updated to include a statement from Natural Resources Canada that was sent after the given deadline.

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In Chelsea Mazur’s dreams, she’s trying to use her inhaler but it’s not working. 

The 30-something Winnipegger was diagnosed with asthma as a child. For years, she has kept it under control. But last summer’s wildfires and heat wave in Manitoba, which choked the skies with toxic, heavy smoke for weeks, presented a dilemma.

To cool off her scorching apartment, Mazur had to run her air conditioner. This pulled in smoky air, which triggered her asthma and forced her to use her inhaler. 

She began refilling her prescription more often, worried she might run out, and checking the air quality index daily before leaving her home. The anxiety and stress of her hypervigilance invaded her sleep.

“I’d have a dream where I’m having trouble breathing,” she said in an interview with The Narwhal. In her dream, she reaches for her inhaler, but it doesn’t function. Then she wakes up. “There was more of that last summer,” she said.

Mazur, who works as a digital content specialist at the University of Manitoba, said she knows wildfires are becoming more frequent and more intense due to climate change, which is being driven by carbon pollution from fossil fuel use. She considers herself lucky she can access medicine for her asthma, but fears what the future may hold as the planet continues to heat up.

“It makes me worry about when I’m older, in my 60s and 70s. What’s it going to be like then to have asthma?” she said. “What’s the air quality going to be like, and how is it going to affect me?” 

More than five million Canadians, like Mazur, live with respiratory conditions. As climate change makes wildfire seasons worse, many of them pay the price with their lungs.

Smoke days were responsible for up to a 23.6 per cent increase in asthma-related hospital emergency visits in Ontario in 2023, according to research published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal. Almost all respondents to a 2025 Asthma Canada survey reported worsening asthma symptoms with poor air quality, and most also reported a decline in their mental health.

Smoke from wildfires is a form of air pollution, carrying toxic gases like sulphur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide and carbon monoxide, as well as fine particulate matter. Other sources of air pollution, from car and truck exhaust to power plants and oil and gas facilities, are also hazardous to our health.

Air pollution can cause heart disease, strokes, chronic lung diseases and cancer, the World Health Organization notes. Federal research has found it contributes to about 17,400 premature deaths each year in Canada. In B.C., a nine-year-old died in 2023 after an asthma attack was made worse by wildfire smoke.

And that’s just one health impact of pollution and extreme weather. People exposed to air pollution also have a higher risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease, according to a study in the journal PLOS Medicine. Doctors and counsellors across Canada note that conditions from poor mental health to Lyme disease to detached retinas can be linked to the effects of a warming world.

When Canadians talk about affordability, the discussion often revolves around the cost of fuel. While we pay for gasoline and diesel with our credit cards, in study after study, scientists have shown we also pay with our bodies. 

In broad terms, it’s possible to juxtapose the economic output of fossil fuels with health costs. The federal energy regulator, for example, has reported the total value of crude oil exports from Canada was $138 billion in 2024. A Health Canada report that same year found the total cost of health impacts attributable to air pollution in 2018 was $146 billion.

But in other ways, it’s tough to quantify how much fossil fuels and climate change are costing Canadians and our health-care systems. 

There’s a perpetual ripple effect of consequences that often go unaccounted for, Ottawa physician Helen Hsu said. Hsu specializes in addiction and mental health and is a spokesperson for the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment.

The indirect costs of climate change show up in things like premature deaths, she said, or the number of days people are sick and can’t work — which also brings a financial cost for businesses, though she’d rather not focus on that.

“It feels a bit ghoulish to say, ‘Well, how much do you contribute to our economy?’ ” Hsu said.

“I think certainly we do pay with our bodies, and we need to start really thinking about that.”

Alex Goatcher paid for B.C.’s 2021 heat dome and wildfires in terms of both physical and mental health, he told The Narwhal in an interview. That year a high-pressure system trapped heat on the ground, like an oven. It led to 619 deaths. Scientists have connected the severity of the wildfires and heat during this time to climate change.

Goatcher is a visitor services worker for Parks Canada and was living in Field, B.C., and working at Yoho National Park when the heat and fires trapped him inside for weeks.

He said he loves hiking on his days off, but couldn’t venture outside due to his asthma. Air conditioners were uncommon in the area until recently, he said, so he didn’t have one at the time.

“Being stuck inside during the prime of summer, with it being scorching hot and the smoke, it really negatively affected my mental health, to the point that I noticed my interactions with my neighbours were more hostile,” Goatcher said.

Adding to Goatcher’s frustration was the way his asthma disrupted not just his immediate work, but his long-term career prospects. His supervisor, concerned for his health, ended up grounding Goatcher during the heat dome when other staff were sent out. He was also forced to turn down an internal job opportunity because it would have involved working outdoors. 

“It never crossed my mind about the smoke and the fires and all that,” he said. “I never thought that this would be any sort of thing I’d have to really deal with.”

Métis sociologist Trisha McOrmond is on the national council of the volunteer climate action network For Our Kids. She uses her training in trauma-informed coaching when broaching the topic of climate change with people who are more vulnerable to extreme weather, including those who work outdoors in jobs like construction or farming.

“There is a level of frustration, and almost like a compartmentalization,” she said — a defence mechanism people use to avoid confronting the stress of knowing they will have to deal with more climate-change consequences at their job. “It’s hard for them to open up and have those conversations, because they have to put it away.”

She said it’s a challenge to put a specific dollar figure on the mental-health impacts of evacuations or other climate-related personal emergencies, because they can appear years after specific events and seem disconnected.

“They’re not showing up by people saying, ‘Oh, I’m worried about climate change.’ It’s showing up as disengagement at work, it’s showing up as [fatigue and burnout]. It’s showing up as increased domestic violence and interpersonal violence,” McOrmond said.

“We don’t see the cost directly, because we don’t have a system that measures those costs. And since we don’t measure them, we don’t see them.”

Most Canadians have come to understand how some unhealthy behaviours are connected to their health — like how smoking cigarettes increases their risk of lung cancer. But many still don’t see the associations between fossil fuel use, climate change and health impacts, Doris Grinspun, the chief executive officer of the Registered Nurses’ Association of Ontario, said in an interview.

This is especially true for work days lost to climate-linked health problems, Grinspun said. 

“I don’t think people really are connecting the dots,” she said. 

“When more pipelines get built, or we will not put an end to fossil fuels, we don’t say what the consequences will be, in human life, in disease, in death and in debt. We are already paying for it.”

Those costs manifest in ways we may not recognize — like our vision.

Particulate matter, certain gases and other pollutants hurt our eyes as well as our lungs, Montreal ophthalmologist  Marie-Claude Robert said. Research has connected higher levels of particulate matter and nitrogen dioxide with more hospital emergency department visits for conjunctivitis, or pink eye.

Other research has suggested a link between heat waves and an increased risk of retinal detachment, which can cause flashes of light and dark spots in vision, as well as blindness if left untreated.

“In my personal practice, when we had heavy smog in Montreal from wildfires out west or up north, a lot of our patients would come in with acute worsening of their symptoms from that poor air quality,” Robert, who represents the Canadian Ophthalmological Society, said.

There are a limited amount of treatments for these symptoms, and each one comes with costs. High-quality artificial tears, for example, can cost up to $30 a bottle and are usually not covered by insurance, she said.

Climate change is also increasing the risk of Lyme disease, as ticks spread into more locations and last longer each season. That disease can lead to chronic disabilities that can remove someone from the workforce, Hsu, the Ottawa physician, said. She’s personally seen a middle-aged man with no pre-existing medical conditions who contracted a tick-borne illness and became paralyzed for months.

Hidden costs also fall disproportionately on vulnerable populations like children, the elderly, those with pre-existing disabilities and pregnant women, Hsu said. 

Heat can trigger premature labour, and keeping preterm babies alive is very expensive for the health-care system. It’s also emotionally and financially difficult for parents — premature birth is the leading cause of mortality in infants in Canada, and those that survive can have lifelong respiratory issues. 

Climate change-related health costs also show up for those who live in remote regions, including First Nations who have to be evacuated from wildfires in their territories, and Inuit whose lands are warming faster than the rest of the world.

And the financially vulnerable are least able to afford measures to protect themselves, like air conditioners or air purifiers. 

Hsu said one of her patients is paralyzed from the neck down and can’t afford air conditioning. During heat waves, he often passes out.

“He’s just living in a state of suffering every summer, and it’s incredibly unfair. It’s wrong that we’re asking those who are most vulnerable in our society to pay that cost,” she said.

For Melanie Hoffman, a school board trustee and community organizer from Edmonton, the emotional toll and financial costs of climate change are front and centre.

As an infant, Hoffman’s now eight-year-old daughter contracted a virus that infects the respiratory tract and had to be hospitalized, eventually requiring airway reconstruction surgery, she said. As a result, she pays close attention to air quality.

A few summers ago, when the city was engulfed in wildfire smoke, Hoffman realized her daughter’s outdoor-focused camp didn’t have guidelines in place for how to accommodate smoke days by bringing the kids inside.

“I felt really concerned for my daughter’s health, but also for the youth that were running the camp. This was their summer job, and they were required to be outside. They weren’t given the tools to manage that,” she said.

She and her husband had to solve the logistical problem of who could take time off work to keep their daughter home. She understands that this is a privilege. 

“If your kids need you home, if you’re self employed, you’re going to pay for that in lost revenue. And if you don’t have benefits from your employer, you’re going to pay in lost days of work,” she said.

Just as difficult was navigating the tension between wanting her to be able to go to the camp and the uncertainty about exactly how harmful the long-term consequences of exposure can be.

“I had not processed for myself the fact that these are the rest of the summers of my daughter’s life. Growing up, certainly in her youth, she is not going to know a summer that isn’t in a changing climate,” she said.

Hoffman holds a PhD in chemistry, is the former program manager for Capital Region EcoSchools with the Alberta Council for Environmental Education and volunteers with the Climate Reality Project Canada. She knows science-based climate solutions, like transitioning to renewable energy sources, using heat pumps and improving public transit, work. But, she said, there’s “an issue of political will and cultural inertia.”

McOrmond, the sociologist, sees a glimmer of hope in the course she teaches on systems thinking, a way of examining the different components of why the world is set up the way it is and how decisions are made as a result. She says students bring excitement and enthusiasm to conversations “as they start to realize that there is another way of looking at this world that isn’t just about extraction.”

Some of the climate solutions related to health she points to are movements to source local ingredients and share food, community-supported agriculture in rural areas to help farmers get food to local markets, local community festivals, volunteer-run shops and food banks.

“We have to stop looking at the big things that are scaring us, and start looking at the small things that are saving us,” she said.

“The more local we are, the safer we are. I know that sounds contradictory, but once we’re safe locally, we can begin to make changes and we can move the needle on a bigger scale. We just have to know each other, and have to trust each other.”

— With files from Julia-Simone Rutgers

Updated on April 23, 2026, at 12:20 p.m. ET: This story has been corrected to note that Melanie Hoffman is the former, not current, program manager for Capital Region EcoSchools with the Alberta Council for Environmental Education.

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Summary

• The federal government is proposing changes to Canada’s access to information regime that could shield some emails and text messages from information requests.
• These sorts of requests have formed the basis of reporting from The Narwhal and other media outlets, and have been used by lawyers, academics and members of the public.
• The Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat is seeking public feedback on the proposal until June 15.

A secretive bid for Canada’s spy agency to share intel with corporations. A behind-the-scenes lobbying effort to weaken climate rules and fast-track a major oil and gas project. A federal-provincial tug of war over a new highway in Ontario.

These, and many more stories by The Narwhal, were built off government documents retrieved through Canada’s transparency law. For more than 40 years, the Access to Information Act has given journalists, lawyers, academics, activists, businesses and political parties a peek behind the curtain at what the government is doing with tax dollars.

In theory, and sometimes in practice, the law allows for an up-close look at a wide range of government records in a timely manner, usually for just $5, and subject to safeguards like removing personal information, certain legal details and classified materials. But other times, requests can take years to process. The regime has long been accused of being too slow and cumbersome.

In early March, the government of Prime Minister Mark Carney proposed altering the tools the law gives the public to hold Ottawa to account. The government says its proposals, which are not yet enacted or spelled out in legislation, are meant to improve the access regime’s transparency and performance. 

But they’re raising concerns among Canada’s information commissioner as well as a group of public interest advocates, who say the changes would actually erode the right of Canadians to know how and why decisions are being made in their name.

“It’s just an excuse to get rid of where the real records are,” investigative researcher and public access advocate Ken Rubin said in an interview.

The March 5 proposals were made by the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat, the federal department that oversees government management, as part of a regular review of the legislation.

The department is responsible for administering the Access to Information Act, as well as for developing information management policies for the public service. It’s asking for public feedback on its proposals until June 15.

Some emails and text messages could be shielded under Canada’s proposed Access to Information law changes

Chief among the concerns of Rubin and other opponents to the changes is the government’s proposal to redefine what constitutes an official record.

It could mean the public loses access to what the government, in its proposal, calls “routine communications” and other “transitory” documents, or any records the government decides don’t hold any “business value.”

This could include information in any format, including email, texts or instant messages, and crafted at any stage, like duplicates or drafts, according to Treasury Board spokesperson Barb Couperus in an emailed response to questions from The Narwhal.

Information that holds business value is anything that “documents activities and decisions of government,” Couperus said. The government would determine whether a record holds business value by looking at the content, and not the format of the record, she added.

Removing these records from the access to information regime would help the government reduce “processing pressures” and support “more timely responses for Canadians,” Couperus said.

The government believes the massive increase in digital records, from email to instant messages to workspace platforms, requires better management.

Being able to examine federal public servants’ communications, whether or not they are deemed to have documented government decision-making, is key to understanding how Ottawa actually functions, Rubin said. These records can provide a window into the unvarnished, real-time thoughts of officials, he argued, unlike other types of government documents that get sent through rounds of draft approvals and wind up feeling sanitized.

“If you want to know the dynamics of government and what’s happening, [email and texts] is where you turn,” Rubin said. “The nature of the records, which are more electronic, are the real records, because that’s how people make policy nowadays.”

In just one example of an email-based story, The Narwhal reported via an access to information request that a representative of an influential oilsands lobby group reached out directly to senior Canadian public servants, asking to be part of the Canadian delegation to a United Nations climate summit. 

As a result, the emails showed, the government gave the lobbyists a platform on the world stage, where they tried to “change the international narrative” of the oilsands.

There is no obligation under the Access to Information Act to create records, however once a formal request is made to access documents, they cannot be destroyed, Information Commissioner Caroline Maynard reminded the ethics committee in a February appearance. 

This includes “transitory” records, she noted, as long as they are related to the access to information request.

The commissioner has the power to order the release of records, after a complaint is filed and determined to be well-founded, and if no other resolution can be reached. However the government has suggested it may “revisit” the commissioner’s powers “to make sure they are working as intended.”

Canada’s access to information commissioner ‘troubled’ by proposal

In a March statement, Maynard said she was “troubled” by government proposals that would “weaken the right of access” including “limiting access to ‘official records.’ ”

She told the committee she agreed there were examples — like an email that just says “thank you” — of “a transitory message that we shouldn’t keep.” But she added that meant it was important for federal departments and agencies to have strong retention policies and to train staff in how they work.

On March 26, Rubin, independent journalist and author Dean Beeby and lawyer and academic Matt Malone, who founded the Investigative Journalism Foundation database Open by Default, sent a letter to the members of the House of Commons Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics committee asking them to “urgently begin an examination of model right to information legislation.” The letter was copied to journalists.

The government is proposing “regressive” changes, the group wrote, adding “we fear the end result will not be helpful and your review cannot wait.”

In 2011, the Supreme Court of Canada recognized the right of Canadians to access government information as “quasi-constitutional.” In other words, it holds more fundamental value to society than other laws, while still being outside of the constitution itself.

The federal proposals come as some provincial governments make their own changes to information access laws.

The Alberta government under Premier Danielle Smith passed legislation in 2024 that limited the kinds of records it is obliged to release under that province’s freedom of information law.

And in Ontario, Premier Doug Ford’s government has introduced a bill to change the province’s law to block the public from accessing any documents, emails, call logs or other details from the premier and cabinet ministers, as well as their political staff.

Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario Patricia Kosseim called those plans “shocking” and said the proposal to block information held by the premier “is about hiding government-related business to evade public accountability.”

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Summary

• The Canada Water Agency will cut about 13 jobs to absorb a $5-million budget cut, as Prime Minister Mark Carney seeks to reduce government spending.
• The agency leads ecosystem restoration and protection work in major freshwater ecosystems, such as the Great Lakes, Lake Winnipeg and the Mackenzie River.
• A spokesperson said the agency “remains fully committed to delivering on its mandate to improve freshwater management in Canada.”

Internal government emails show staff at the Canada Water Agency trying to make sense of Prime Minister Mark Carney’s budget cuts in response to questions from the media.

The Canada Water Agency launched in October 2024 to help protect Canada’s fresh water, including leading restoration work to clean up the Great Lakes, Lake Winnipeg and other important sources of drinking water. Canada is home to 20 per cent of the world’s fresh water, which is being threatened by climate-driven floods, droughts and algal blooms, as well as industrial contamination and other groundwater stressors.

Carney’s first federal budget proposed $3.8 million in lower spending by 2029-30 at the agency, and a further $1.2 million categorized as a separate “ongoing,” or permanent spending reduction, for a total of $5 million in cuts. They were part of Carney’s $60 billion in proposed cuts — split into $48 billion in spending reductions through 2029-30, and a further $12 billion in “ongoing” cuts with no given end date.

The Narwhal reported on the budget in November, summarizing the government’s proposal as cutting $5 million in total spending at the agency over a number of years. After that story was published, the agency emailed The Narwhal with a request for a “small correction,” asking that figure be changed to $3.8 million.

When The Narwhal asked the agency why it shouldn’t include the $1.2 million in ongoing spending cuts in the figure — which would make it $5 million — internal emails released under Access to Information law show staff reached out to Finance Canada, sharing a screenshot of the budget’s spending review page for the agency with the proposed “ongoing” cut circled in red. 

“Hello Finance Department colleagues, we are fact-checking an article in The Narwhal that mentions the [agency]’s budget cuts, and just want to make sure we are understanding the budget chart correctly,” the agency wrote. 

The water agency asked the Finance Department whether the $5-million figure, which it had already asked The Narwhal for a correction on, was in fact, correct.

After the Finance Department said it would look into the matter, the water agency asked for guidance on how to explain the permanent portion of the spending reductions to journalists.

“Do you have messaging you can share around communicating the ‘ongoing’ to the media?” the staff member asked.

The next day, an official at Finance Canada said the story did not need a correction after all.

Canada Water Agency to cut 13 jobs, but continue restoration and protection of fresh water

Last month, a Canada Water Agency planning document showed how it expected to absorb the first three fiscal years’ worth of cuts, amounting to $2.6 million by 2028-29. One result was the loss of roughly 13 jobs, or what’s known as full-time equivalent positions, from a workforce of 223.

It said it was also planning on “modernizing government operations” and “leveraging new technology” as well as making administrative and support functions more efficient.

At the same time, the agency plans to keep conducting water quality and ecosystem restoration, including in the Great Lakes, it said.

The federal budget says cuts are necessary to “rein in government spending” from pandemic highs. Carney has gone on to trumpet other multibillion-dollar investments in areas like the military, technology and infrastructure that could in turn pose new environmental challenges for water.

Last week, the Canada Water Agency took on a new task when the Carney government promised $3.8 billion to “protect nature” as part of a new environmental strategy. The agency will be working on the country’s first National Water Security Strategy meant to reflect Indigenous knowledge systems including water stewardship.

The Narwhal emailed the Canada Water Agency asking how its spending cuts will affect freshwater stewardship and restoration work.

A spokesperson said the government’s budget cuts would not impact the agency’s “planned activities, staffing and funding commitments for restoration and protection” of its eight freshwater ecosystem initiatives through Canada’s Freshwater Action Plan, a “signature” federal program.

The program includes the Great Lakes, lakes like Simcoe and Winnipeg and rivers like the St. Lawrence in Ontario and Quebec, and the Mackenzie in the Northwest Territories. Former prime minister Justin Trudeau’s 2023 federal budget allocated $650 million over 10 years to these freshwater initiatives.

“Like all federal organizations, the Canada Water Agency is contributing to the government’s plan to reduce spending, eliminate duplicative programs and focus resources on core priorities,” the spokesperson wrote.

“The agency remains fully committed to delivering on its mandate to improve freshwater management in Canada by providing leadership, effective collaboration federally and improved coordination and collaboration with provinces, territories and Indigenous Peoples to proactively address national and regional transboundary freshwater challenges and opportunities.”

The agency also told The Narwhal the reduction in jobs would be staggered, with four next fiscal year, followed by another four the year after and five more after that.

Asked how the agency was planning for the budget’s proposed $1.2 million in permanent cuts, the spokesperson reiterated the budget review was meant to ensure government spending was sustainable and funding cost-effective programs and activities.

Federal funds support water conservation in Ontario and the Great Lakes

The spending reductions come at a time when the Ontario government is amalgamating its watershed protection agencies, called conservation authorities, from 36 to nine, as well as moving to give itself the power to dictate more rules around drinking water. 

Federal funding has been important for conservation authorities because Ontario has not been investing as much in community science and ecosystem restoration, Catherine Febria, the Canada Research Chair in freshwater restoration ecology, said. 

An associate professor at the University of Windsor’s Great Lakes Institute for Environmental Research, Febria said that the federal “scale of investment is something that the province was never able to do.”

“That was really exciting, it was like a leapfrog in progress with this single initiative, and a number of large-scale projects were invested in [over] the first two years,” she said, naming the freshwater ecosystem initiatives in places like the Great Lakes as one example.

The federal government and Ontario have been working together “for over 50 years” through a series of agreements on protecting and conserving the Great Lakes, the spokesperson for the Canada Water Agency said. 

As one example, the Canada-Ontario Agreement on Great Lakes Water Quality and Ecosystem Health lays out how the two will coordinate protection efforts.

“This partnership has led to remarkable improvements, including dramatic reductions in harmful pollutants, and the return of pollution-sensitive species such as bald eagles,” the spokesperson wrote.

Ontario’s Ministry of the Environment, Conservation and Parks did not respond to questions from The Narwhal about how much provincial funding was going towards efforts to restore freshwater ecosystems, and to what extent the ministry was working with the federal water agency.

Febria said given the federal water agency is still relatively new, it’s still not clear what its full mandate will be, not to mention if or how the proposed cuts will impact its work or what exactly may be lost.

She said another Carney initiative, directing $1.7 billion toward a series of scientific initiatives, including research awards attracting high-level talent from abroad, holds promise. Some of the research awards will focus on water security, environment and climate resilience. 

Still, it’s a “tricky balance,” she added, between investing in research and also carrying out on-the-ground work to improve local areas.

“I think we need both,” she said. “When the pendulum swings towards a whole bunch of researchers, that’s great, but at the end of the day, we still need people and organizations and communities on the ground.”

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