Ahead of COP30, climate scientists called out governments for retreating on emissions reduction measures in the face of a deepening climate emergency – and, with the 2025 budget, Canada’s government signalled its intent to do the same.
In a pre-COP30 brief, Canada’s Environment and Climate Change Minister Julie Dabrusin announced her government’s intent to “to advance international efforts to address climate change” on the 10th anniversary of the Paris Agreement. Yet, the same government has expressed ambivalence towards the Paris Agreement’s targets, with Mark Carney previously stating that he is more interested in “results rather than targets and investments rather than bans.”
Given these inconsistent positions, how serious is the Canadian government really about addressing the climate crisis? What direction is the Carney government heading?
One of the biggest challenges of finding clarity in Canada’s climate policy is cutting through the technical minutiae that often obscures politics and policy. Behind the targets, agreements, policy papers, press conferences and, apparently, COP30 branded cruise ships, it is difficult for anyone to see what has actually been accomplished.
Under the Paris Agreement, Canada committed to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to a maximum of 440 megatonnes by 2030. The 2024 emissions data shows that Canada remains stalled at 694 megatonnes and is not on track to meet its target. This kind of failure appears to present two options for the Carney government: perform better or promise less.
The new budget’s Climate Competitiveness Strategy cancels climate rules and initiatives, while cutting billions of dollars in planned program spending in favor of tax credits and corporate subsidies. What counts for climate competitiveness in this budget are tax credits for liquified natural gas (LNG) facilities and carbon capture schemes, totalling $325 million over the next five years.
Programs that were intended to either monitor pollution or store emissions to meet Canada’s Paris Agreement targets are all facing cuts as part of Carney’s austerity and investment plan. Environment and Climate Change Canada is expected to take a $1.3 billion cut in annual program spending by 2030. The Impact Assessment Agency of Canada and the Canada Water Agency – federal regulators meant to safeguard the environment – are also facing cuts. Former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s $3 billion plan to plant two billion trees, a legacy program meant to build a potential carbon sink to help reduce future emissions, has also been scrapped by Carney’s budget.
Carney has signalled that the levies polluters pay as part of the industrial carbon price, where the average industry pays the comparatively-low price of $8.40 per tonne of emissions, may not increase despite the commitment needed to meet Paris Agreement targets. Somehow, the federal government is also confident that the planned oil and gas emissions cap will “no longer be required” even though data from the Parliamentary Budget Officer stated clearly that, in the absence of the cap, “upstream oil and gas emissions will exceed the legal upper bound” by 2030.
Capping upstream emissions from production activities, i.e from the extraction of fossil fuels, without capping the actual volume of oil and gas going to market was always questionable. But now Carney’s budget is combining talk of real climate action with commitments to “maximise carbon value for money” and “protect the competitiveness of oil and gas.” Even if one understands this charitably, it would seem to preclude any plan to seriously reduce total emissions any further. One can have the cleanest oil extraction process in the world, but if the actual volume of fossil fuels getting burned remains constant or increases, say, in the interest of maximizing carbon value for money, it’s a rather moot point. Total emissions will still rise, the climate crisis will intensify and the poorest in the world will bear the brunt of the costs.
When Carney promised a budget of “sacrifice” he clearly did not mean a sacrifice for energy company owners. What this does mean, however, is sacrifice for Canadians in the form of cuts to programs, cuts to public sector jobs, and climate inaction.