Canada votes to keep Carney as leader, over anti-climate Conservatives

The Conservatives would have scrapped a carbon tax on big industrial emitters and boosted oil and gas production

Canadians chose Mark Carney, a former central banker and UN climate envoy who leads the ruling Liberal Party, as their prime minister in Monday’s election, rejecting the anti-climate action Conservative Party of Pierre Poilievre.

The election result means that the climate policies of the world’s 12th-biggest emitter will be broadly unchanged, as the Liberals – under Justin Trudeau and now Carney – have governed the North American nation since 2015. At the time of publication, it was still unclear whether the centre-left party had won a majority of seats in Canada’s parliament.

Poilievre’s Conservative Party had promised to scrap climate polices like a carbon tax on industry and to boost oil and gas production and exports.

Meghan Fandrich, who survived a devastating wildfire driven by climate change in her village of Lytton, said there was “some comfort in knowing that Canada has rejected the Conservative leader – someone who voted against climate policies over 400 times, planned to accelerate fossil fuel production, and whose platform would have driven emissions higher, fuelling even more climate disasters”.

A Carbon Brief analysis suggests that a Conservative victory would have led to a rise in Canada’s emissions, whereas a Liberal government would keep emissions falling – although not fast enough to meet its own climate targets.

Trump drives Carney comeback

Climate change did not play a major role in the election, particularly as Carney scrapped an unpopular carbon tax on consumers soon after taking over from Trudeau in March.

Polls had suggested that the Conservatives were on course for a huge victory until January, when Trudeau resigned and US President Donald Trump charged big tariffs on Canadian exports and threatened to annex the country, causing many voters to back Carney over Poilievre, who is more ideologically aligned with Trump.

Carney is an ex-banker with a long history of climate action. As governor of the Bank of England, he called on investors to take their money out of fossil fuel companies.

After leaving the bank, he promoted carbon offsets through the Taskforce on Scaling Voluntary Carbon Markets and helped launch a coalition of financial institutions trying to reduce emissions called the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero.

Ana Toni, the Brazilian CEO of this year’s COP30 UN climate summit, said it was “very positive to have Mark Carney who has a deep knowledge of climate change and economics at the helm in Canada, and knows that the best path ahead is through the energy transition”.

After Trudeau announced in January that he would resign, Carney won the Liberal Party contest to take over from him as prime minister in March and has now won a general election, giving him a mandate to rule the country for up to four years.

Pick a lane on energy

Caroline Brouillette, head of Climate Action Network Canada, said Carney now had the chance to prove his climate credentials as Canada’s leader: “With the election over, Prime Minister Carney has the opportunity to practice what he has preached for years, and kickstart a green transformation that will build our country’s resilience for decades to come.”

But, she said, that means “picking a lane with regard to energy: no more flirting with fossil fuel expansion and new pipelines, which would come with staggering costs to our wallets and our planet”.

Under pressure from Conservatives labelling him “Carbon Tax Carney”, the prime minister scrapped the controversial tax on consumers – which had been his party’s signature climate policy since 2019 – this March.

The tax, which a March poll showed two-thirds of Canadians wanted to get rid of, was paid by some drivers filling up their cars with gasoline or diesel and by people buying heating oil for their homes.

Carney said he would replace the tax with measures to retrofit homes for energy efficiency and install heat pumps, saying the changes “will make a difference to hard-pressed Canadians” and “ensure that we fight against climate change”.

Carbon tax on industry stays

But he did maintain the carbon price on big industries, which the Conservatives had promised to scrap. Analysis from the Canadian Climate Institute suggested that, while the consumer carbon price grabbed the headlines, the industrial price was expected to drive three times more emissions reductions by 2030.

Carney’s election manifesto also promises to boost electric vehicle production and use, as well as infrastructure to transmit electricity across the country and carbon removal and storage technology.

The Conservative manifesto pledged to “unleash Canadian resources”, by scrapping the emissions cap on oil and gas production, enabling construction of gas export terminals on Canada’s west coast and approving oil exports from Arctic ports.

Canada this year holds the G7 presidency and will host a leaders summit for the group of big, wealthy countries in the oil-rich province of Alberta in June.

Harjeet Singh, director of the Satat Sampada Climate Foundation in India, said that, as the G7 chair, Carney “must summon the political courage to champion bold global climate action – starting at home by rejecting new oil and gas projects and urging other G7 nations to dramatically scale up public climate finance to support developing countries in deploying renewable energy and addressing escalating climate impacts”.

Cover photo:  Mark Carney makes a keynote address to launch the private finance agenda for the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) at Guildhall in London, Britain February 27, 2020. Tolga Akmen/Pool via REUTERS