Canadian governments want to produce more fossil fuels, even while the country burns.
The 2015 United Nations Paris Agreement set the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5ºC above pre-industrial levels to avoid the worst disasters spurred by climate change. In just nine years, 2024, that benchmark was broken.
Around the world heatwaves, fires, floods, storms and droughts are all increasing, driven by climate change. They are killing people, shattering communities, and damaging agriculture and infrastructure.
Canada’s two worst forest fire seasons on record were 2023 and 2025, pumping even more C02 into the atmosphere. The Arctic is warming three times faster than the world’s average, devastating the ecology. Glaciers around the world are disappearing, including in the Rockies which will destroy prairie agriculture, large parts of which are suffering from long-term drought.
Yet politicians are not sounding the alarm and massively shifting Canada towards renewable energy. Instead, they want more pipelines, committing to expanded oil and gas production for decades to come.
Citing economic difficulties, sovereignty, and security in the face of Trump’s tariff war, Carney is entertaining plans for another pipeline to the BC coast, an export port on Hudson’s Bay and a plan by Danielle Smith, Scott Moe and Doug Ford to build a rail export corridor and a pipeline from Alberta to Ontario.
Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew refused to sign this agreement, citing the need for Indigenous consensus before building infrastructure projects. Smith, Moe and Ford all say they will consult First Nations, but their words are hot air given Carney’s One Canadian Economy Act and Building Canada Act. The Act, fast-tracked by both Liberals and Conservatives, allows the federal cabinet to approve what they deem “nation-building projects” before an environmental assessment or Indigenous consultation is complete. Many Indigenous communities oppose the Act as it betrays their rights.
Recently, Carney spoke about “decarbonized oil” — a contradiction of terms — resulting from a “grand bargain” where Ottawa would facilitate another bitumen pipeline to tidewater in exchange for the highly profitable oil companies within the Pathways Alliance finally moving forward with their carbon capture and storage (CCS) project. CCS claims to address climate change by capturing carbon emissions. However, the CO2 is mainly used to extract more oil from wells, so would increase fossil fuel use. So far it is expensive, energy intensive and does not work.
Federal and provincial governments along with companies like Chevron, 3M and United co-fund CCS research, but these companies largely do not buy their own technology as it is not profitable! Even the right-wing, pro-market Fraser Institute pans CCS, stating its questionable usefulness “outside of private for-profit use” pushing more oil and gas out of depleting reservoirs. Pathways Alliance, who netted $35 billion in 2022, want taxpayers’ dollars to fund two-thirds of “their” useless $16.5 billion project.
A Real Solution
The working class needs affordable and ecologically sound homes, a rapid shift to renewables, urban and trans-Canada rail, expanded transit, sustainable agriculture, durable products, and ecological restoration. Implementing this program would create millions of jobs. But corporations will never take on this program because it is not profitable for them.
That is why Socialist Alternative supports public ownership and democratic control of key sectors of the economy, including finance, transport, communications, energy and large manufacturing. With public ownership and democratic control, society can collectively decide to make the necessary transformations while securing good jobs for all involved. Workers, with their wide range of skills and knowledge, can take decisions that benefit society and improve productivity, safety and quality of goods, while reducing wasteful spending on advertising, weapons, and private jets for the super-rich.
Capitalists and their politicians always choose profits over people’s needs and nature, regardless of decades of pleading. Mass mobilizations are needed to take control of society for the majority. Environmentalists, the workers’ movement, and Indigenous communities united around a program for jobs, social needs and nature would be a powerful force that could win a healthy planet and future.
