What happened to Car­ney’s pol­luter­pay prom­ise?

Gov­ern­ment appears to have shelved ini­ti­at­ive put for­ward in lead­er­ship race

This article was written by Alex Ballingall and was published in the Toronto Star on December 16, 2025.

An early Mark Car­ney prom­ise to make heavy indus­tries help pay for your green renov­a­tion or elec­tric cars appears to have been shelved, amid linger­ing ques­tions about fed­eral con­sumer incent­ives to cut emis­sions.

It’s one piece of a broader Car­ney cli­mate agenda that is still tak­ing shape in the face of cri­ti­cism over a recent pipeline accord with Alberta. There are also doubts about whether fed­eral policies can end Canada’s dec­ades of fail­ure on inter­na­tional emis­sions tar­gets, with an offi­cial update expec­ted any day.

Car­ney first made the pol­luter­ pay prom­ise last Janu­ary, when he was run­ning for the Lib­eral lead­er­ship in a race that he ulti­mately won to suc­ceed Justin Trudeau as prime min­is­ter. At the time, Car­ney pledged to scrap the “divis­ive” con­sumer car­bon price and replace it with a sys­tem of green incent­ives.

One part of that plan was to cre­ate new options for big pol­luters sub­ject to indus­trial car­bon pri­cing sys­tems to buy cred­its that would fund people’s green pur­chases, with Car­ney offer­ing elec­tric cars and energy­ effi­cient renov­a­tions as examples.

But the Lib­eral gov­ern­ment has not high­lighted the pro­posal since it returned to power in the April 28 gen­eral elec­tion, and Envir­on­ment Min­is­ter Julie Dab­rusin’s office did not say in a recent state­ment whether it’s still a pri­or­ity. The Prime Min­is­ter’s Office declined to com­ment.

Rick Smith, pres­id­ent of the Cana­dian Cli­mate Insti­tute, called the plan an “inter­est­ing early ­stage idea” that would need to get fleshed out fur­ther if the gov­ern­ment ever decides to go with it.

“We aren’t sure at the moment how that spe­cific mech­an­ism would work,” Smith said, sug­gest­ing the gov­ern­ment could have good reason to take a dif­fer­ent dir­ec­tion.

“We think there are bet­ter ways of encour­aging con­sumers to pur­chase (and) use low­ emit­ting options like elec­tric vehicles and heat pumps,” he said.

However, Smith added that there remains a “lack of clar­ity” about other options the gov­ern­ment is pur­su­ing. The Car­ney Lib­er­als, for instance, have not announced the con­tinu­ation of expired fed­eral sub­sidies for zero ­emis­sion vehicle pur­chases. And a new pro­gram to sup­port home ret­ro­fits — repla­cing the out­go­ing Greener Homes Grant scheme — is so far only avail­able in Man­itoba, requir­ing other provinces to sign on if they want to par­ti­cip­ate.

Smith’s think tank has repor­ted that emis­sions reduc­tion efforts appear to be stalling amid fed­eral policy uncer­tainty and the water­ing down of meas­ures without clear replace­ments to drive down emis­sions.

Cath­er­ine Abreu, a prom­in­ent cli­mate advoc­ate who was one of two offi­cials who resigned from the gov­ern­ment’s inde­pend­ent advis­ory body over the recent Alberta pipeline deal, sug­ges­ted Monday that she doubts whether the Car­ney gov­ern­ment will put in place policies that keep pace with Canada’s cli­mate com­mit­ments.

“All (Car­ney) seems inter­ested in incentiv­iz­ing so far is the abil­ity of oil and gas CEOs to grow their profit mar­gins,” Abreu told the Star.

Former envir­on­ment min­is­ter Steven Guil­beault quit the Lib­eral cab­inet after the Alberta deal, declar­ing it was now impossible to hit Canada’s cli­mate tar­gets.

Under the accord, the Car­ney Lib­er­als offered fed­eral sup­port for at least one major new oil pipeline if a huge, pub­licly sub­sid­ized car­bon cap­ture project for the oil s­ands goes for­ward. Ott­awa also scrapped a planned emis­sions cap for the oil and gas sec­tor, sus­pen­ded national reg­u­la­tions for cleaner elec­tri­city in Alberta, and delayed a tar­get to sig­ni­fic­antly reduce potent meth­ane emis­sions by five years.

This came on top of Car­ney’s earlier decision to elim­in­ate the con­sumer price on car­bon and delay — and pos­sibly dis­mantle — plans for zero ­emis­sion vehicle sales man­dates that were set to kick in next year.

The gov­ern­ment, however, insists it is still set on slash­ing emis­sions, while also deal­ing with the trade crisis set off by U.S. Pres­id­ent Don­ald Trump’s tar­iffs, and seek­ing to trans­form the eco­nomy so Canada is less depend­ent on com­mer­cial ties to the United States. The Nov. 4 fed­eral budget said Ott­awa would strengthen indus­trial car­bon pri­cing and expand exist­ing tax cred­its for clean tech­no­logy, elec­tri­city, man­u­fac­tur­ing and car­bon cap­ture to put up pub­lic money to encour­age private industry to reduce emis­sions.

Before the end of this month, the gov­ern­ment is also required to pub­lish updated pro­jec­tions for national emis­sions, and show whether cur­rent policies can hit Canada’s cli­mate tar­gets under the inter­na­tional Paris Agree­ment.

Canada has not achieved any national emis­sions tar­get since global efforts to fight cli­mate change began in the 1990s. Its goal for 2030 is to cut emis­sions to 40 per cent below 2005 levels, and to 45 per cent below 2005 levels by 2035.

The most recent tally of national emis­sions says they declined 8.5 per cent from 2005 to 2023.