“Net-Zero Tyranny”

This week, Liberal MP and former environment minister and ex-Greenpeace activist Steven Guilbeault proved he’s capable of protest that doesn’t involve scaling the CN tower or chaining himself to oil sands equipment.

The Quebec MP announced his forthcoming resignation from the House of Commons, days after the CBC broke the news that 14 Liberal MPs (whom the CBC won’t name — but undoubtedly includes Guilbeault) penned a letter to Prime Minister Mark Carney, calling him out for allegedly reneging on the party’s environmental commitments. The letter insists that “climate change is the greatest threat of our time,” which certainly sounds as though it was penned by Guilbeault.

It was the end of an era and the four politicians who were its chief architects gathered in one room in Ottawa.

Former prime minister Justin Trudeau and his former climate change cabinet ministers — Catherine McKenna, Jonathan Wilkinson and Steven Guilbeault — on Wednesday were at the Rideau Club, a private social club near Parliament Hill.

Political operatives behind the scenes, MPs across party lines and journalists were also there. The room was packed and on a warm Ottawa evening in May it quickly got hot.

So there was a business case for natural gas exports to Germany after all.

Of course, we never thought otherwise. But back in August 2022, with Europe freezing and scrambling after Russia invaded Ukraine, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz came to Canada hat in hand looking for reliable LNG supplies. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau looked him in the eye and delivered his classic line, that there was “never a strong business case” for Canadian LNG exports to Europe. Too expensive, too far, Europe was going green anyway, etc.

Is Canada on track to meet its climate goals? The honest answer is “no” — and the really honest answer is that Canada’s climate goals will never be reached. They are folly and were designed by climate ideologues who had no concept of consequence, economic reality or understanding of how Canada was founded and thrived before and after we became a nation. This way of thinking has damaged the country.

The debate is increasingly polarized with positions hardened on all sides. Yet the economic implications of net-zero policies cannot be ignored. In an increasingly unstable world, energy security is no longer theoretical — it is strategic. Climate policy that outpaces economic reality will not succeed.

h/t CBCWatcher

Senator David Wells "Net zero, infinite damage — How climate policy is undermining Canada"

"If global demand persists — and it will for decades — then the world should be looking to jurisdictions like Newfoundland and Labrador and to Canada, generally, not away from them with… pic.twitter.com/2k5UHoICs5

— cbcwatcher (@cbcwatcher) May 28, 2026

There was a striking story which was buried in the news cycle in Canada by reports of the new Carney-Smith Memorandum of Understanding. While Canadians were being told to celebrate an agreement that might — might — allow a pipeline to begin construction in the fall of 2027, the United Arab Emirates announced plans for a new pipeline that will be fully operational around the same time.

Let that land for a moment. A desert nation with roughly a quarter of our GDP is completing pipeline infrastructure on a timeline that Canada can only hope to begin breaking ground on.

Casual international observers would be forgiven for assuming Canada is in the comforting hands of a climate champ. After all, while climate policy rollbacks reign supreme in Donald Trump’s America, Canada is now led by a man who, while serving as governor of the Bank of England, delivered a celebrated 2015 speech, “Breaking the tragedy of the horizon”, warning the global investment community of the financial risks of climate change; who went on to serve as UN special envoy for climate action and finance; and whose 2022 book Value(s) had much to say about the “existential threat” of climate change. A man who recently dazzled the world with his Davos speech on how middle powers can stand up to global bullies.

Look, we get it. Next to the US president, Carney seems so debonair, thoughtful and calm – a lifeline of stability in a volatile new world.

Building at speeds not seen in generations, as per Mark Carney’s oft-repeated election pledge, has been less hypersonic than the prime minister might have wished.

As the new parliamentary budget officer pointed out last week in an analysis of the spring fiscal update, only two of 15 projects being overseen by Carney’s Major Projects Office are actually under construction, and the two largest have yet to reach a final investment decision.

Part of the problem remains regulatory uncertainty, and that was the subject of a discussion paper issued by the government on Friday. That sounds of little consequence, but it could prove seismic.