Vox Pop Policy-Making

Climate isn’t at the top of the public policy agenda. It rarely has been. That didn’t stop us from getting the Paris Agreement done 10 years ago. It needn’t and mustn’t stop us now.

Dec 13, 2025

December 12, 2015 was a balmy 8°C in Ottawa, down from 11°C a few days earlier, which had seen golfers converge on the region’s many golf courses.

On the political scene, Rachel Notley’s government in Alberta had just signed a relatively ambitious suite of climate policies into law. The newly-elected Liberal Cabinet achieved gender parity for the first time in Canadian history, “because it’s 2015”. One of those ministers, Catherine McKenna, was in Paris to help negotiate the Paris Agreement, including a push to drop the level of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)’s target from 2 to 1.5°C of warming. After a decade of the Harper government’s attacks on science and climate organizations, December 2015 was a welcome relief for those of us who cared about the well-being of our shared environment.

But this remarkable climate progress didn’t happen because it was 2015. As we celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Paris Agreement this weekend, it’s easy to forget that these changes in Canada’s policy direction happened in a context in which climate was no more popular an issue among the general public than it is today. In late November 2015, climate change was among the top priorities for only 13% of Canadians. If that number sounds familiar to you, it’s because around 18% of Canadians consider climate among their top priorities today.

Melting Climate Policy

2025 has been a tough year for climate policy in Canada. Twelve months ago, we had a range of policies designed to accelerate the downward trend in the country’s emissions. Things were far from perfect, but at least there was real, measurable progress.

Fast forward to today and the federal government’s climate policy list looks like this: ~~a (despised, detested) consumer carbon tax, draft emissions cap regulations~~, draft clean electricity regulations (this may yet get crossed out if the provinces all sign deals with the feds exempting them from the regulations), industrial carbon pricing, draft methane regulations (now delayed to 2035 for Alberta’s oil and gas companies, the biggest methane emitters in the country), ~~Greener Homes grant and loan~~, clean investment investment tax credits (ITCs), ~~consumer electric vehicle (EV) subsidies as well as~~ an EV availability standard (sounding more and more likely to be axed), a firm oil tanker ban (also possibly up for debate), and a ~~functional~~ federal Impact Assessment Agency (severely weakened by Bill C-5, the Build Canada Act).

Since the Alberta-Canada memorandum of understanding (MOU) reversed much of the last decade’s progress on climate policy, the Canadian pundit class has been crowing that climate is no longer a priority for Canadians. And they aren’t wrong, if the only indicator you use is the top-line number of people who say climate change features among their number one priorities, aka that 18%.

Yet dig just a little bit deeper into the numbers and you’ll find that a large majority of Canadians are alarmed about the increasing threat—and costs—of climate change. Politicians and the general public routinely underestimate the extent to which everyone else cares deeply about addressing climate change. That concern crosses virtually all political lines.

But again, governments don’t govern based entirely on public opinion. What the Canadian public wants most, according to recent polls, are good jobs, health care, and affordability measures. What are we getting in exchange? Tax breaks on luxury goods, LNG, and AI data centres. Not exactly what we asked for.

So why, if most Canadians are concerned about the impacts climate change is having on our livelihoods and environment, isn’t the government acting?

A Great Time to be a Fossil Fuel Lobbyist

There is a multi-million-dollar industry operating in Canada’s capital that aims to sway the federal government in one direction. Unsurprisingly, that direction isn’t the one we need to maintain a liveable planet.

Regardless of the crisis or issue, be it the war in Ukraine, the COVID-19 pandemic or, currently, the erratic Trump administration, the fossil fuel industry has the solution: more oil and gas.

So long as the government is mostly hearing from fossil fuel-aligned lobbyists, attending their events, recruiting their board members, literally reading from their script, and even hiring their former staff, Canada will maintain its status as a climate laggard.

All of which has made Canada a hot mess. According to the federal government’s own Sustainable Jobs Council, the country is severely underprepared for the world-wide energy transition and there is no national conversation about energy policy which isn’t dominated by special interest groups and lobbyists. Yet Canadians care overwhelmingly about, yes, economic development and national sovereignty, but in combination with strong climate policies.

Better Than a Royal Commission

We need to do better. And that begins with a government run in the Bay St. style making room at the table for the rest of us—not as a checkbox exercise, but as a basic operating condition.

We know how to do this. Canada has often lived up to a solid tradition of wide-ranging dialogue that dates back generations.

But not so much over the past few weeks. The government’s backtracking and confusion have demonstrated that Canada needs to have a national conversation, free from lobbyists, cherry-picking pundits, and self-interested corporations about the direction the country as a whole should be going. In earlier, simpler times—before the climate crisis had us on such a tight, non-negotiable deadline to get its worst impacts under control—it would have been tempting and might have been a moment of power and purpose for the government to deliver on that vision with a Royal Commission on Climate Change.

This government won’t and shouldn’t do that, not least because a royal commission on any topic would allow any skilled politician of any political stripe to kick the issue down the road until the wise commissioners have issued their report.

But right in line with Carney’s determination to do big things faster, the country needs a speedy but still substantive, evidence-based, and widely participatory version of what royal commissions at their best were built to achieve. The federal government must engage seriously with independent experts, rights holders, and the general public on the future of Canadian climate policy. And they needn’t look too far to find inspiration: Senator Mary Coyle, along with Senators for Climate Solutions, organized a Canadian Youth Climate Assembly this fall which supported young people from across the country in the development of 23 solid recommendations for the government.

Any chance of improving Canadian climate policy begins with removing the fossil fuel lobby from the conversation about our energy future. They’ve had their chance, they’ve done more than enough damage, but their day is done—and by their own behaviour, the industry increasingly knows it. Now it’s time for an independent national conversation on the energy transition that brings the rest of us into the picture.