This opinion was written by Tim Gray and was published in the Globe & Mail on January 2, 2025.
It will require bold leadership to get to a better future
As we move into 2026, the landscape of environmental advocacy in Canada has changed dramatically. Canada’s closest neighbour and biggest trading partner is driving massive political and economic restructuring, which has created unease among Canadians at a collective and personal level.
These new threats have also forced public attention away from clean energy, climate change, chemical and plastic pollution and urban sprawl. Unfortunately, many polluting industries have seized this moment to maximize their profits, lobbying decision-makers to roll back progress and carry out attacks on long standing environmental protection rules and legislation.
These industries argue that it’s for the greater economic good. But is it? Evidence from history shows that societies succeed in the long term when they integrate protection of the environment into economic and social development strategies. In fact, for the first time in human history, scientifically conclusive evidence is telling us that economic progress must be grounded in what is best for the environment.
As we move into 2026, my prediction (and my hope) is that Canada will take the opportunity to get some key things right to chart a course toward a better future.
The federal government has been hyper focused on nation building projects. In 2026, watch for these projects to start aligning with clean energy, climate action and protection of nature. Prioritizing projects like highspeed rail, offshore wind farms, clean steel and better public transit will keep us in our nation building era without leaving the environment behind.
The fossil fuel industry has worked hard to block renewable energy projects. Fortunately, the price of solar, wind and battery storage systems has dropped so dramatically that it will become increasingly difficult to convince citizens to stick with expensive and polluting gas and oil. In 2026, expect to see a continuing shift from gas furnaces to heat pumps and from gas plants to renewable energy production projects.
As we change the way our homes are powered, big changes will also come to the rules that guide how those homes are built. In place of regulations that have prevented midrise buildings, we can anticipate that cities and towns will recognize that the housing crisis will be partly solved by encouraging more of this type of building. This will allow us to densify existing neighbourhoods.
Making our neighbourhoods denser and more walkable will hopefully mean fewer private cars on the road. But when we do need to drive, those cars should be electric. This year, we’ll be moving toward more affordable EVs and hope for a major government push on charging infrastructure. There is no future for Canadian automakers and the jobs they provide if Canada sits out the move to EVs. In 2026, EVs will be back in style as both consumers and governments recognize that they are less polluting and better value.
Speaking of value, 2026 is the year we think we’ll finally see the Ontario government put a price on non-alcoholic drink containers through an expanded deposit-return program. This will greatly increase recovery and recycling rates. It’s not hard to do, and eight of the other 10 Canadian provinces already have successful programs in place.
It will also be the year that the jig is up on the long-hidden truth about the risks of polyfluoroalkyl chemicals (PFAS), also known as “forever chemicals.” These include developmental effects, cancers and disruption of hormone regulation. These chemicals are found in a plethora of everyday products, including non-stick coatings, menstrual products and furniture. Fortunately, after long delays, we can watch for federal bans on at least some of the most egregious PFAS uses this year. We must continue to push for action on all of them.
Finally, the cynical Alberta-federal government MOU that undercuts Canadian climate action will run up against rocks of its own making. Oil demand is expected to peak by the end of this decade, meaning the massive increases in oil sands production and a risky bitumen pipeline to the British Columbia northwest coast make no economic sense. These projects will never move forward. We’ll be reading the MOU’s epitaph well before the year’s end.
The predictions I’ve laid out here can become a reality, but it will require bold action from our leaders. This year, let’s hold them accountable and ensure that Canada moves in the right direction. Here’s to a 2026 where clean water, a safe climate and healthy communities ground all our efforts to create economic and social prosperity.
Province to create `special economic zones’ to offset effects of U.S. tariffs
This article was written by Rob Ferguson and was published in the Toronto Star on January 1, 2026.
Ontario is paving the way for Premier Doug Ford’s controversial “special economic zones” in 2026 amid other changes that include making life tougher for impaired drivers and easier for skilled workers moving here.
Stepping up the push to fasttrack development to offset economic damage from U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs, new regulations taking effect Thursday let the province bypass local and provincial rules for “trusted proponents and projects.”
But critics are worried protections for the environment, workers, wildlife, endangered species, Indigenous communities and their treaties will be watered down in what they dub “no law” zones.
Ford, who is keen to develop the vast Ring of Fire’s critical mineral deposits in northwestern Ontario for electric vehicles, defence projects and other industries, argued too much red tape would hold projects back at a critical time.
“We need to get moving, folks,” he told reporters when Bill 5, legislation establishing the zones, passed in June.
“We aren’t going to sit back and wait 15 years to get shovels in the ground while the whole world is eating our lunch,” he added, noting that’s how long it can take to open a mine in Ontario.
Economic Development Minister Vic Fedeli signalled two weeks ago that the province is working with “interested partners” to designate the first sites.
“Special economic zones will bolster Ontario’s advantage by cutting red tape, accelerating approvals and protecting the jobs and industries that keep our province resilient and competitive,” he said.
The zones will be a “critical tool to accelerate major nationbuilding projects and secure jobcreating investments that deliver lasting prosperity for our workers,” Fedeli said.
He pledged to maintain the province’s standards for environmental protections and to consult with relevant parties — including Indigenous communities, some of which were vigorously opposed to Bill 5.
Opposition parties aren’t buying Fedeli’s assurances about the zones, which can be designated anywhere in the province, such as on prime farmland.
“You cannot trust this government to give themselves unlimited powers,” said New Democrat Leader Marit Stiles, citing the Progressive Conservative government’s $8.28billion Greenbelt land swap scandal now under criminal investigation by the RCMP.
Green Leader Mike Schreiner issued his own warning given that Ford is under fire for his $2.5billion Skills Development Fund that gave hefty payouts to hundreds of groups with lowranked applications — with Labour Minister David Piccini now under investigation by Ontario’s integrity commissioner over it.
“Special economic zones will open the door to backroom deals and insider giveaways, while Indigenous rights, environmental protections, worker rights and local democracy suffer,” Schreiner said.
Under the regulations filed Dec. 16, Fedeli must be convinced projects are “economically significant or strategically important” and that proponents have “a good record of complying with legal requirements” such as health and safety for workers, the environment and financial standards. (The same goes for any subcontractors a corporation or other proponent hires to work on a project.) In addition, Fedeli must be convinced proponents “do not pose a security risk” and he must consent to any change in the control of a company building a project.
Also in regard to Ontario’s economy, the province is now allowing certified professionals — including healthcare workers, architects, engineers, land surveyors and electricians — from other Canadian jurisdictions to start jobs in Ontario shortly after arriving.
They can work on a provisional basis until their certifications are formally recognized by the relevant Ontario regulatory authorities. The change is intended to help employers in Ontario get the skilled workers they need.
Meanwhile, Ontario is also taking aim at drivers who get behind the wheel when they shouldn’t. Amendments to the Highway Traffic Act now impose lifetime suspensions for anyone convicted of impaired driving causing death.
Other measures include mandatory remedial education for drivers after firsttime alcohol and drug occurrences, longer roadside suspensions for driving under the influence, automatic mandatory minimum licence suspensions upon conviction for stunt driving and lifetime licence suspensions upon a third conviction for vehicle theft.
Additionally cracking down on auto theft, a new offence under the Highway Traffic Act provides for fines up to $100,000 and six months in jail for knowingly providing a false vehicle identification number when selling an automobile. That’s in addition to a licence suspension of up to a year. (Further changes proposed in November under “Andrew’s Law,” but not yet passed by the legislature, would impose a lifetime driving ban for anyone convicted of dangerous driving causing death.)
Also taking effect in 2026:
■ For homeowners, the Municipal Property Assessment Corporation will now be able to send assessment notices by email.
■ Updates to the Ontario Fire Code require homeowners and landlords to install working carbon monoxide detectors on every floor of a residence. Some detectors monitor for both smoke and carbon monoxide.
■ Parents receiving Canadian Disability Benefits will no long have those payments considered as income when determining eligibility for childcarefee subsidies.
Special economic zones will open the door to backroom deals and insider giveaways, while Indigenous rights, environmental protections, worker rights and local democracy suffer. MIKE SCHREINER ONTARIO GREEN PARTY LEADER
This article was written by Somini Sengupta and was published in the Globe & Mail on January 1, 2026.
Solar panels are seen in Cape Town, South Africa, in December. Chinese solar panels are finding enormous markets in Africa, where around 600 million people lack reliable electricity.
Businesses, individuals flock to technology, forcing South African power utility to rethink licensing requirements
Ismet Booley, a dentist in Cape Town, had a serious problem a few years ago. Patients showed up for appointments, only to find the power had gone out.
No power meant no X-rays, no fillings, no root canals. “I just couldn’t work,” Dr. Booley said.
South Africans like Dr. Booley have found a remedy for power cuts that have plagued people in the developing world for years. Thanks to swiftly falling prices of Chinese-made solar panels and batteries, they now draw their power from the sun.
These aren’t the tiny, oldschool solar lanterns that once powered a light bulb or TV in rural communities. Today, solar and battery systems are deployed across a variety of businesses – auto factories and wineries, gold mines and shopping malls. And they are changing everyday life, trade and industry in Africa’s biggest economy.
This has happened at startling speed. Solar has risen from almost nothing in 2019 to roughly 10 per cent of South Africa’s electricity-generating capacity.
No longer do South Africans depend entirely on giant coalburning plants that have defined how people worldwide got their electricity for more than a century. That’s forcing the nation’s already beleaguered electric utility to rethink its business as revenues evaporate.
Joel Nana, a project manager with Sustainable Energy Africa, a Cape Town-based organization, called it “a bottom-up movement” to sidestep a generationsold problem. “The broken system is unreliable electricity, expensive electricity or no electricity at all,” he said. “We’ve been living in this situation forever.”
What’s happening in South Africa is repeating across the continent. Key to this shift: China’s ambition to lead the world in clean energy.
Over the past decade, while the United States ramped up fossil fuel exports, China has focused on dominating renewables. Today, Chinese companies make so many of the world’s solar panels, electric vehicles and batteries that they are slashing prices and scrambling to find buyers.
Tariffs have thwarted them somewhat in the United States and Europe, but they’re finding enormous new markets in Africa, where around 600 million people lack reliable electricity. Across the continent, solar imports from China rose 50 per cent the first 10 months of 2025, continuing a trend, according to a review of Chinese export data by Ember, a British energy-tracking group.
South Africa was the largest destination for Chinese solar, but not the only one. Sierra Leone imported the equivalent of more than half its total current electricity-generating capacity, and Chad, nearly half.
China has much to gain. Not least, new markets and new geopolitical influence. Its companies are doing more than just exporting. State-owned Power China is also building utility-scale solar farms in South Africa, as in other developing economies.
And now China is bidding on contracts from the state-owned utility, Eskom, to add 14,000 kilometres (about 8,700 miles) of transmission lines that South Africa desperately needs to move its increasing supply of solar power around the country.
“Obviously we don’t have money for that,” South Africa’s deputy minister for electricity and energy, Samantha GrahamMaré, said in an interview, referring to the hefty upfront costs of expanding the grid.
Who does? China. Chinese state-owned companies are among several international firms to bid on South Africa’s US$25-billion grid expansion, vying to build the lines and then make money, in part, by operating them. Chinese firms hold similar build-operate contracts in countries including Brazil and the Philippines.
The solar surge does little to address the most pressing social and economic problems of developing countries like South Africa, the need to generate new jobs for millions of young citizens. Installation labour is local, but the panels and batteries are almost all made in China.
“The economic trade-offs are significant,” said Marvellous Ngundu, a researcher with the Institute of Security Studies, a think tank in Pretoria. “Jobs are created elsewhere. South Africa consumes advanced green technologies without capturing the industrial benefits.”
The rapid shift by so many businesses and people to install their own panels and batteries is causing headaches for Eskom, the already troubled utility.
Every kilowatt generated by privately owned solar installations is a hit to its bottom line. Eskom’s coal-burning plants, which provide most of South Africa’s power, are old and in poor shape.
Power cuts have subsided recently, but it wasn’t long ago that Eskom had to turn off electricity to some areas for hours at a time – a practice called “load shedding” that hurt the economy and fed public anger. During the worst days of load shedding, the latest of which came in early 2024, even Ms. Graham-Maré, the deputy electricity minister, installed a solar system in her home. Her energy bill, she said, fell by two-thirds.
Multiply her hack by the thousands and you have what South Africans call Eskom’s “death spiral.” Well-off customers lower their bills with solar, which causes Eskom to lose money, which in turn forces Eskom to raise prices and encourages more people to install solar.
It doesn’t help that some people tap power lines to draw electricity illegally, without paying for it, or that Eskom has suffered years of mismanagement.
In the past five years alone, South Africans installed solar panels representing more than seven gigawatts, or about onetenth of the total installed capacity of 55 gigawatts. Most is privately owned.
Now, unable to beat solar, Eskom is joining solar.
The utility has removed onerous licensing requirements on private installations. It has allowed people to sell power to the grid. And it has tweaked its rates so that customers pay a fixed charge in addition to the cost of any power they consume. Essentially, people pay simply to be connected to the grid, a standard feature in other nations that’s new in South Africa.
Eskom is now planning to erect large solar arrays on the grounds of shuttered coal plants. And by 2040 it intends to shift its predominantly coal-based system to cleaner sources. “That’s where the world is moving,” said Nontokozo Hadebe, Eskom’s sustainability chief.
If the speed of the change is remarkable, it’s still leaving some of South Africa’s most difficult economic problems unresolved, or is making them worse.
The problem, experts said, is that South Africa lacks policies to require local manufacturing. But creating them would drive up costs. The prices of made-in-China panels are by far the lowest in the world.
South Africa’s rapid pivot to Chinese solar gear, as affordable as it is, also doesn’t resolve a basic problem. The country’s poorest citizens still can’t afford to put up their own panels.
They lack the money to buy the gear outright and the ability to get loans.
In Langa township, one of Cape Town’s largest low-income suburbs, one of the rare businesses with solar is Colin Mkosi’s bicycle delivery service, Cloudy Deliveries. His single panel, donated by a charity, powers a few lights and computers. It doesn’t provide nearly enough to charge the electric bikes his business relies on.
The e-bikes are, of course, from China. But his power still comes from South Africa’s unreliable grid. “It’s expensive,” he said, and “we can’t operate without electricity.”
Mr. Mkosi’s wants are part of a broader problem. South Africa buys growing volumes of highvalue technologies from China, while selling it raw materials of limited value. China overtook the U.S. as its biggest trading partner in 2008. With its trade gap rising to more than US$9-billion in 2023, compared with barely US$1-billion in 2000, there are increasing calls to make trade relations with China less unequal.
The difference between South Africa’s trade ties with China and with the U.S. is stark.
U.S. President Donald Trump has imposed a 30-per-cent tariff on South African goods and excluded the government from participating in an international summit of the world’s 20 biggest economies. He has also reversed a Biden administration plan to help the country accelerate its planned closures of its oldest, dirtiest coal plants.
“As relations with the United States have become increasingly strained, Beijing has positioned itself as a reliable and sympathetic partner,” Mr. Ngundu said.
This opinion was written by Conor Chell and was published in the Globe & Mail on January 1, 2025.
The proposed new amendments to the anti-greenwashing provisions in the federal Competition Act were intended to give businesses some breathing room. But if passed as currently drafted, they may do the opposite and constrain them by creating more legal risk, more uncertainty and a wider gap between what companies say and what they can actually prove.
For the past year, Canada has been home to some of the most stringent and widely discussed anti-greenwashing rules in the world. The original amendments under Bill C-59 required companies making environmental or climaterelated claims about their business to substantiate them using “an internationally recognized methodology.” That language, although imperfect, at least pointed organizations toward established frameworks – the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), the Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Protocol, science-based target methodologies, and third-party assurance practices.
The government has now proposed removing the “internationally recognized methodology” requirement altogether and that change is expected to pass into law in early 2026. In its place, organizations will fall back on the general due-diligence standard that already exists in competition law: claims must be adequately and properly substantiated. On paper, that may sound flexible. In practice, it will be a problem.
Most organizations are not currently set up to substantiate their sustainability and climate-related representations to the level that Canadian courts and regulators have historically required when assessing “adequate and proper” testing.
That threshold – shaped by decades of misleading advertising cases – is surprisingly high. It often requires objective, measurable evidence that is replicable, independently verifiable and directly linked to the claim being made. Many companies making forward-looking climate statements, high-level environmental, social and governance (ESG) claims, or qualitative sustainability assertions simply do not have that level of evidentiary rigour in place.
This wide disconnect exists despite the public believing that businesses are now under stricter scrutiny. The antigreenwashing debate has been frontpage news for months.
The very idea that companies must be prepared to defend their climate and environmental claims has woven itself into Canada’s collective conscience. But removing the methodological requirement will not lower public expectations – it will raise questions about what substantiation means, and whether companies can credibly meet it.
The problem is even more acute when you look at how organizations assess their own readiness. According to KPMG’s most recent Global CEO Outlook, more than 60 per cent of the 1,350 CEOs polled believe they are on track to meet their net-zero ambitions and the sustainability claims underpinning them, yet fewer than 30 per cent have allocated the capital and resources needed to achieve those goals. This creates what I call a “substantiation gap”: companies feel confident enough to make sweeping climate and sustainability claims, but have not invested enough to credibly meet them.
This gap is already visible in practice. In reviewing Canadian companies’ sustainability disclosures, we continue to find numerous misrepresentations. These issues ranged from minor overstatements to material omissions, but the volume alone demonstrates how far many companies still are from the level of evidence regulators and the courts expect.
Some argue that risk will decrease because the government also removed the new private right of access to the Competition Tribunal, which would have allowed private parties to bring greenwashing complaints. But this change is unlikely to meaningfully reduce exposure. In the months since Bill C-59 passed, no private complaints were filed – likely due to the cost, complexity and the inability for complainants to seek monetary damages. Meanwhile, greenwashing allegations have simply migrated elsewhere.
We have already seen:
■ a complaint to the Alberta Securities Commission alleging misleading climate representations,
■ an enforcement proceeding initiated by the Ontario Securities Commission involving similar issues and
■ a civil lawsuit alleging mismanagement of climate-related risks.
In other words, even without a private right of action under the Competition Act, plaintiffs, investors, activists and regulators have found – and will continue to find – other avenues to advance greenwashing claims.
Taken together, these factors point in one direction: legal risk will increase, not decrease, if the proposed amendments are enacted.
Companies will face higher expectations from the public, stricter scrutiny from regulators, more complex evidentiary standards and a growing substantiation gap between what they say and what they can prove.
The solution is not to avoid sustainability disclosures or retreat from climate commitments. It is to professionalize them. Canadian organizations would be well-served to undertake a formal, comprehensive legal risk assessment of their sustainability disclosures and to understand, in concrete terms, what is actually required to substantiate the claims they make.
Clear, credible sustainability communication is not a regulatory burden – it is a competitive advantage. But only if it can withstand scrutiny.
Study also finds heat waves have become the deadliest extreme weather events
This article was written by Alexa St. John and was published in the Toronto Star on December 31, 2025.
Climate change worsened by human behaviour made 2025 one of the three hottest years on record, scientists said.
It was also the first time the three year temperature average broke through the threshold set in the 2015 Paris Agreement of limiting warming to no more than 1.5 C since preindustrial times. Experts say keeping the Earth below that limit could save lives and prevent catastrophic environmental destruction around the globe.
The analysis from World Weather Attribution (WWA) researchers, released Tuesday in Europe, came after a year when people around the world were slammed by the dangerous extremes brought on by a warming planet.
Temperatures remained high despite the presence of a La Niña, the occasional natural cooling of Pacific Ocean waters that influences weather worldwide. Researchers cited the continued burning of fossil fuels — oil, gas and coal — that send planetwarming greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
“If we don’t stop burning fossil fuels very, very, quickly, very soon, it will be very hard to keep that goal” of warming, Friederike Otto, cofounder of World Weather Attribution and an Imperial College London climate scientist, told The Associated Press. “The science is increasingly clear.”
Extreme weather events kill thousands of people and cost billions of dollars in damage annually.
WWA scientists identified 157 extreme weather events as most severe in 2025, meaning they met criteria such as causing more than 100 deaths, affecting more than half an area’s population or having a state of emergency declared. Of those, they closely analyzed 22.
That included dangerous heat waves, which the WWA said were the world’s deadliest extreme weather events in 2025. The researchers said some of the heat waves they studied in 2025 were 10 times more likely than they would have been a decade ago due to climate change.
“The heat waves we have observed this year are quite common events in our climate today, but they would have been almost impossible to occur without human induced climate change,” Otto said. “It makes a huge difference.”
Meanwhile, prolonged drought contributed to wildfires that scorched Greece and Turkey. Torrential rains and flooding in Mexico killed dozens of people and left many more missing. Super Typhoon Fungwong slammed the Philippines, forcing more than a million people to evacuate. Monsoon rains battered India with floods and landslides.
The WWA said the increasingly frequent and severe extremes threatened the ability of millions of people across the globe to respond and adapt to those events with enough warning, time and resources, what the scientists call “limits of adaptation.” The report pointed to Hurricane Melissa as an example: The storm intensified so quickly that it made forecasting and planning more difficult, and pummelled Jamaica, Cuba and Haiti so severely that it left the small island nations unable to respond to and handle its extreme losses and damage.
This year’s United Nations climate talks in Brazil in November ended without any explicit plan to transition away from fossil fuels, and though more money was pledged to help countries adapt to climate change, they will take more time to do it.
Officials, scientists and analysts have conceded that Earth’s warming will overshoot 1.5 C, though some say reversing that trend remains possible.
Yet different nations are seeing varying levels of progress.
China is rapidly deploying renewable energies including solar and wind power — but it is also continuing to invest in coal. Though increasingly frequent extreme weather has spurred calls for climate action across Europe, some nations say that limits economic growth.
Meanwhile, in the U.S., the Trump administration has steered the nation away from clean energy policy in favour of measures that support coal, oil and gas.
This opinion was written by David Olive and was published in the Toronto Star on December 31, 2025.
In Mark Carney’s telling, he is still in the vanguard of fighting climate change.
That assertion is, on the surface, difficult to sustain given the prime minister’s apparent retreat on the climate front.
Carney scrapped the national consumer carbon tax soon after he became prime minister in March.
His “nationbuilding” projects under consideration for fasttracking unveiled this year include fossil fuel developments.
And the highprofile entente Carney negotiated between Ottawa and Alberta in November unwinds major climate change policies of the Trudeau government.
The controversial “memorandum of understanding” between the two governments effectively greenlights a second crude oil pipeline from the Alberta oilpatch to the B.C. coast — a sister to the Trans Mountain oil pipeline (TMX) that began operations in 2024.
The TMX reduces Canada’s reliance on the U.S. market for oil exports. Almost half of its volume in its first year of operation went to nonU.S. markets, notably China.
The starting point for Carney’s energy policy might be an offhand remark he made in one of several revealing yearend television interviews he gave just before Christmas.
“I am a politician, but I’m still a pragmatist,” Carney told the CBC.
Canada continues to fight climate change, Carney asserts, but with a more practical approach.
“Climate change is continuing remorselessly,” Carney said.
In addressing it more effectively, “there is a moral imperative, a moral obligation to future generations,” Carney said. Acting on that imperative, in Carney’s view, requires more comprehensive policies.
They consist, in a nutshell, of ramping up production of both “clean energy,” with major investments in hydroelectricity and nuclear power, and fossil fuels, because “the world is going to use hydrocarbons for coming decades” under every scenario experts put forward, Carney said.
For Carney the question is: “What kind of hydrocarbons are going to be used?” The answer, he said, is “low cost, low risk, low carbon. If Canada is going to continue to supply hydrocarbons, it needs to be low carbon.”
Meanwhile, Carney said, “we’re going to grow clean energy in this country at a scale never seen before.”
Is it possible for Canada to become an energy superpower, a transformation that Carney has promised Canadians, and still meet our netzero emissions targets for greenhouse gases?
In Carney’s vision, squaring that circle is possible with a new approach. That approach is to develop every kind of energy source, and to pair regulations with significant investment.
“We have too much regulation and not enough action,” Carney said of the energy policies he inherited.
And it’s true that with all the regulations, limitations and bans imposed on the energy sector by the Trudeau government, Canada is still far short of meeting its emissions reduction targets.
Carney vowed that his government is “one hundred per cent focused on doing things that are going to reduce emissions.”
Those things are going to cost scores of billions of dollars. They also promise to generate considerable economic activity.
They include lowcarbon liquified natural gas plants (LNG), a new clean electricity grid in B.C., cleanpower interties between provinces, the mininuclear reactors Ontario has under development, the world’s first zerocarbon copper mine in Saskatchewan, and a huge wind farm off the Nova Scotia coast.
Carney expects that most of the money for those transformative projects will come from the private sector and not the public purse, a contrast with the $34billion Ottawa spent building the TMX.
The memorandum of understanding between Ottawa and Alberta is something of a template. Alberta gets favourable Ottawa consideration of a second crude oil pipeline to the B.C. coast; removal of planned Trudeauera caps on oilpatch emissions; and a lifting of the federal oil tanker ban off the B.C. coast.
In return, the Alberta oilpatch builds a multibilliondollar carbon capture and storage facility that removes 16 megatons of carbon from its oil and gas production — roughly equal to taking 90 per cent of Alberta’s cars and trucks off the road.
It also removes about 75 per cent of methane emissions, a more potent contributor to climate change than CO2. And the oilpatch must pay more than six times the current industrial carbon tax — an incentive to decarbonize.
For Canada to pioneer “decarbonized” hydrocarbons is, Carney said, “an enormous opportunity for this country to leapfrog the United States.
“The United States has taken its eye off the ball on this — they’ve really downgraded it.”
So, the goal is to become a cleanenergy superpower, an advantage over rival hydrocarbon producers the U.S., the Middle East and Russia.
Much of the money to transform the Canadian energy sector will come from abroad, Carney believes.
“Virtually everyone wants to do more with Canada,” said Carney, who spent much of 2025 travelling in Europe, Asia Pacific, and the Middle East.
In addition to Canada’s political stability, “we’re an increasingly confident nation that has ambitions,” Carney said. “So, people want to deal with us.”
This article was written by Jeffrey Jones and was published in the Globe & Mail on December 29, 2025.
A storm of new business risks and a shift in government investment priorities have converged to force a rewrite of what ESG is, and even what it should be called.
The concepts of environmental, social and governance – once a hot market trend – have long been the target of a backlash in the United States. MAGA Republicans, especially, decried them as “wokeism” that held companies and investors back from their main objective – making money.
But this year, simultaneous geopolitical and trade disruptions and crises affecting Canada have prompted experts to assert that the triptych, as it has been known, is being forced to evolve.
Climate change is still intensifying weather-related disasters, and Canadian companies are still tallying the environmental and social risks to their businesses. But now, other concerns outside the traditional ESG realm have entered the discussion.
So, what will ESG become? As a capital-markets veteran, Milla Craig, chief executive officer of Montreal-based ESG consultancy Millani Inc., lived through the fallout from 9/11, U.S. bank mergers, the financial crisis and other disruptions. They showed that nothing remains static, Ms. Craig said.
“You can sit and hold on to your views and your opinions, or you adapt. And I think that there’s a bit of reckoning right now. There’s a phase as things grow and come to a marketplace,” she said. “Now, there’s a pragmatism.”
She argues that ESG now encompasses items that have not traditionally been included, such as energy security and economics, affordability, a focus on sovereignty among Indigenous nations and Canada’s Arctic, as well as cybersecurity and artificial intelligence.
“I don’t care if you call it ESG. These are business issues. These are topics that are being focused on by capital markets. It feels like it’s actually the mainstreaming of all the things that lay out within ESG, but they’re just becoming what a board needs to be looking at. It’s part of the materiality,” Ms. Craig said.
As an ESG and sustainable-infrastructure analyst, Baltej Sidhu has noted the expansion of what fits into ESG and has predicted that the label’s days are numbered.
Mr. Sidhu, of National Bank Financial, said sustainable investing in some cases no longer excludes the defence industry, for instance, or the materials that go into its armaments, as security concerns grip parts of the world. This took hold after Russia invaded Ukraine, he said. Some of those materials are also used for green technology.
“In the past few years, we’ve seen an evolution of what ESG is and what ESG isn’t,” he said.
“At the outset, it was very green, and I think it’s widened its breadth and scope.”
The risk-management tools developed within ESG for climate and societal issues are now ingrained in business culture, even if the acronym fades away, he said.
This evolution is not happening in a vacuum. Domestically, government priorities have shifted, as Prime Minister Mark Carney pushes to get major industrial projects built to blunt the impact of U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariff war.
Mr. Carney, previously one of the foremost exponents of climate finance, has pledged to loosen or scrap a number of the previous government’s decarbonization regulations as part of a memorandum of understanding with Alberta, which wants a new oil pipeline to the West Coast. As a quid pro quo, Alberta must strengthen its industrial carbon pricing.
Yrjo Koskinen, professor of sustainable and transition finance at the University of Calgary’s Haskayne School of Business, believes carbon pricing remains the best tool for reducing carbon emissions, even if those moves over all have upset environmentalists.
Yet companies are still embracing the principles of ESG for managing risk, and collecting the metrics, if they see it improving value for their shareholders, he said.
“Even if the term ESG might be retired at some point, I think the activities are going to continue, maybe under the sustainability label. So the death of ESG is highly exaggerated,” Prof. Koskinen said.
Mr. Carney’s government has also called for some provisions in anti-greenwashing legislation to be scaled back. Several companies, especially in the fossil fuel and financial sectors, complained that the legislation prevented them from publishing anything about their environmental records and ambitions by putting them at risk of stiff financial penalties. Many removed materials from their websites.
The law firm Torys recently reported that 91 per cent of the largest 200 Canadian companies published a sustainability, ESG or climate-focused report last year, down from 95 per cent in its previous study. Meanwhile, it said “materially fewer” companies used the term ESG to describe the report.
Millani’s surveys, however, have shown that major investors are not backing off their own commitments to sustainable investing, including demanding climate-related and work-force diversity metrics as they evaluate their holdings.
Climate Engagement Canada, whose members, comprising several institutional investors, seek to push the largest industrial emitters to reduce climate-related financial risks, increased its membership in 2025. The group now collectively manages $14.5-trillion of assets.
In addition, there is still money flowing into ESG-related funds, both public and private. National Bank Financial reported net inflows of $1.5-billion into Canadian ESG-focused exchange-traded funds from January to November. In the most recent month, there was a net outflow of $161-million, though most of that was driven by redemptions among large institutional funds in the NBI Sustainable Global Equity ETF, the bank reported.
Long-term investors remain active in private markets. Investors plowed US$20-billion into the second iteration of NBI Sustainable Global Equity ETF, making it the world’s largest private fund targeting the energy transition.
Among other big deals, Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec bought out Montrealbased Innergex Renewable Energy Inc. for $2.8-billion.
The law firm Torys recently reported that 91 per cent of the largest 200 Canadian companies published a sustainability, ESG or climate-focused report last year, down from 95 per cent in its previous study. Meanwhile, it said ‘materially fewer’ companies used the term ESG to describe the report.
This Letter to the Editor was written by Samantha Green and was published in the Toronto Star on December 27, 2025.
Two key Toronto climate policies appeared set to be shelved. Then the public spoke up, Dec. 9
What climate impacts are people experiencing in their homes? Impacts to their health. Canadians spend 90 per cent of their time indoors. As the climate crisis worsens, the buildings we live in can either cause harm or help protect us from extremes. Across Canada, summers are getting hotter and more deadly. A maximum heat bylaw in rental units is critical. In Toronto, we saw 24 days last summer in which temperatures exceeded 30 C. We don’t know what next summer will bring, but we know access to cooling saves lives.
The Building Emissions Performance Standards Policy, revived by popular demand after having been shelved, will also deliver significant health benefits. Its emissionsreduction requirements will drive retrofits that could help protect a building’s residents from temperature extremes; the installation of heat pumps with air filters to reduce exposure to wildfire smoke; and a transition away from gas, improving indoor air quality and lowering asthma rates, especially among children.
We shouldn’t be surprised that residents support these policies. We know we need to drive down the emissions fuelling the climate crisis and to protect our health from climate hazards where we experience them most: in our homes.
This opinion was written by Doug Saunders and was published in the Globe & Mail on December 27, 2025.
PHOTO ILLUSTRATION: THE GLOBE AND MAIL. SOURCES: GETTY IMAGES
Don’t lose hope, Doug Saunders writes. You’re not watching the world end – you’re about to build a new one
If you are under 30, there’s a message you’ve likely received many times during this painful year: You’re inheriting the wreckage of a once-great world, and your life will be less prosperous, peaceful or productive than the one older generations have enjoyed. You’ve heard it apologetically from your parents and their peers, ominously from the media, and perhaps angrily from your own mind. You may even be among those who’ve vowed not to bring children into “this world.”
I get it. The unprecedented period of global growth and betterment that lasted from about 1990 to 2010 predated your adult life. Instead you’ve watched, over the past decade and especially over the past year, as older generations and their leaders have crashed the planet ecologically, allowed autocratic-minded figures and intolerant extremists to seize key parts of the democratic world, set out to replace human labour via resource-guzzling data centres, and left you a future seemingly without decent jobs or affordable housing and a catastrophically diminished world order.
But this is a dangerously shortsighted vision. Today’s end-time pessimism is a fallacy. It’s built on path dependency: the notion that the downward curve on the graph will continue, that the current decline has become irreversible. And it’s built on this century’s underlying belief among liberals and moderate conservatives that we must be passive victims of history, rather than its agents.
In fact, it is much more likely that Gen Z has come of age at a fortuitous time. We are not approaching the end, but coming to a beginning.
People who are young today will very likely be the heirs to the greatest period of rebuilding, growth and new invention of this century – not as a matter of choice or ideology, but out of urgent necessity. They face a role comparable to those who were young in 1946, when the decades of rebuilding after the Second World War had only begun.
At that time, surrounded by the endless ruins of nations and institutions and economies and the threat of terrifying new technologies, prospects for the new generation looked grim. The young adults of 1946 were surrounded by severe inflation, unemployment, food shortages and the worst government debt in history. Western countries struggled with fears that the forces of nationalism and authoritarianism that had propelled the war were about to come sweeping back, supported by a miserable generation suffering declining living standards, without any of the glory of the war years.
Yet the opposite proved true. The boomers inherited an era of renewal. The rebuilding of the world’s economies and the creation of new international structures and institutions led to the greatest explosion of economic growth, well-being and international co-operation in human history, one that propelled two decades of full employment and upward mobility and an unprecedented spread of democracy and human development.
This comparison might have seemed hyperbolic before the catastrophic events of 2025. The collapse of the United States into a shockingly extreme form of far-right strongman rule – one that even cautious and conservative analysts now freely call fascism – has rapidly threatened the security, institutional and democratic stability of the free world. It became a global threat earlier this year when Washington made the promotion of extreme-right and racially intolerant governments in European democracies its official international-security policy. “The decades of the Pax Americana are largely over for us in Europe,” Friedrich Merz, Germany’s conservative chancellor, declared this month. “It no longer exists as we know it.”
And 2025 capped off the three consecutive hottest years in recorded history, leading scientists to declare that a dangerous atmospheric warming of 1.5 C (at least temporarily) is now unpreventable.
That occurred as the United States, the world’s secondlargest greenhouse-gas emitter, withdrew from virtually all climate agreements and aggressively pushed its own economy away from renewable energy and electric vehicles and toward coal, while constricting global trade with punitive tariffs and shutting down the world’s largest sources of humanitarian, medical and military aid.
After a decade of democratic governments backsliding into de facto authoritarianism and illiberalism, this year marked a nadir: The Sweden-based International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance declared that 2025 saw the worst decline of democratic freedoms this century.
Unlike the Second World War, today’s global emergencies won’t have a clear end date. The rebuilding has to begin while multiple crises are still taking place, and while major countries are opposed to solutions. But that also has precedent: The rebuilding of the 1940s began before the Second World War was finished, and often before its end was a sure thing (the United Nations and the Bretton Woods institutions that still regulate the world economy were being created while the war was at its peak). And of course, that age of rebuilding took place amid the Cold War, and thus on two isolated but competing tracks – one democratic and one authoritarian – which is also similar to what’s happening today, with China’s share of climate rebuilding already substantially under way.
Building a climate-resilient and non-emitting world, and restoring the world’s institutions of governance, economy and security in the absence of the United States, will be a massive undertaking that will occupy decades and cost more than any project in world history. It will require, and create, great amounts of economic growth over long periods, and will be a major source of employment. Current fears that artificial intelligence will destroy job markets will likely be answered by this need: Given the soon-to-be non-growing size of the global workforce, both human and non-human employment will likely be maxed out, for a considerable time, by the looming demands of such projects.
In fact, the rebuilding has already begun – albeit only in some places. Both Canada and Germany this year elected governments that wouldn’t otherwise have been very popular with voters, but won rare cross-party support because they were singularly focused on building new institutions and relationships to replace the hole left by the disappearance of the United States, in security, trade and climate. While you may not agree with the targets or quantities of Mark Carney’s or Friedrich Merz’s security and “nation-building” investments, their popularity speaks to a mass public appetite for programs intended to build a new world rather than tear down the old one.
There will be an era of rebuilding, even if we do not know when it will fully begin, how long it will last, or whether it will fully succeed. It will not be the product of a choice, a specific ideology or belief system: It will arise from necessity. We have brought the political and ecological challenges of the world to the point of unavoidable crisis, and the sane majority will have no option but to act.
The big question is whether we have a sane majority.
Although extremist regimes have rarely attracted a majority of voters (including in the United States), they excel at manipulating the electoral system to gain power. It is entirely possible that France or Germany could end up with a neo-fascist government for a time. What if support for parties of hate and isolation is not declining but growing, especially among the young?
There is strong reason to believe that it isn’t.
The past year was marked with dramatic uprisings by young people, especially in poorer countries, that sought to overthrow entrenched dynastic authoritarian regimes and to restore or introduce something resembling democratic or at least more normal and accountable government. These “Gen Z revolutions” began in Bangladesh, where students and other people under 30 successfully drove the resignation of a long-serving and corrupt ruling family in late 2024 and delivered a democratic moment that continues to inspire hope. They continued this year with regimes forced out of office in Nepal, Mongolia, Madagascar, Peru and Bulgaria, with major protest movements continuing in a dozen other countries.
There’s reason to be skeptical of the “Gen Z” branding: It has always been people under 30 who have dominated protests, riots and revolutions, everywhere in the world. Virtually any mass uprising could have been named after whatever generation happens to be in its teens and 20s at the time.
But there is something measurably distinct about under-30s in many countries. The voting waves that have brought authoritarian-minded governments to power have, with only a few exceptions, been dominated by people in their 40s and 50s. And the principal victims of the decline in economic conditions and freedoms created by these governments have been the youngest generations.
There is substantial evidence that a majority of young people in most countries – democratic or otherwise – strongly desire a change in the system to one that is more representative and reformist, especially on issues such as inequality and climate change, not less.
A major meta-analysis of multiple international surveys conducted this year by professors Bobby Duffy and Paolo Morini at King’s College London found that, contrary to some headlines and small-scale surveys wrongly suggesting that democracy has fallen out of favour among the young, the authoritarian-minded population under 30 is exceptionally small – under 6 per cent in Britain – and that more detailed studies showed a desire among youth to replace those elected populist governments that have shortchanged them. “They have significant issues with how the political system has not delivered for them,” Prof. Duffy said, “but they’re not looking to tear it up and replace it with autocratic leadership.” Their results were supported by a Pew Research Center study that found that in 10 countries (including Canada), the proportion of under-35s who want dramatic economic-system changes to reduce inequality was typically 50 per cent again larger than older groups.
There is substantial evidence that a majority of young people in most countries – democratic or otherwise – strongly desire a change in the system to one that is more representative and reformist, especially on issues such as inequality and climate change, not less.
The economic harm of tariffs and protectionism, and the increased inequality and reduced freedoms caused by far-right governments, tends to accrue disproportionately to the young. And these regimes oppose climate-change policy – one of the top two things that young people in most countries say they are disproportionately concerned about, even more than earlier generations were at the same age. So it’s quite likely that Gen Z uprisings will become more widespread, and increasingly successful, as demographic change makes that cohort a larger share of the electorate.
Much of the current end-times pessimism is rooted in the way we think about the climate crisis. Too often this century, the message has been one of loss: “Unless we do something painful, this is going to be devastating, and potentially fatal to human civilization.” But it should have been one of cost and opportunity: “Solving this is going to be expensive and labour-intensive – and the longer we delay, the more expensive and challenging it will be.”
We have now reached the point where the climate emergency is actually taking place, and will surely get worse before it gets better.
That doesn’t mean we will quietly await our tempestuous fate. Majorities in most countries understand the need for very large-scale public investments to reduce the risk.
It means we now face a triple challenge: First, to replace our carbon-based energy and transportation sources with non-emitting ones; second, to develop and implement new technologies and methods to reverse existing warming; third, to erect vast amounts of infrastructure to protect our cities and farmlands against existing warming and ocean-level increases while keeping them productive.
The last decade has seen the publication of several global estimates of the investments required to end, and then reverse, atmospheric warming (usually by 2050) from the International Energy Agency, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and from groups of scholars. All estimate that de-carbonizing electrical generation and transportation is the single largest need, the sine qua non: If the largest economies can manage that, we’re most of the way there.
Most estimates say that about 1,000 gigawatts of renewable and nuclear energy capacity will need to be constructed for each of seven years to meet a 2050 goal; in 2024, only 585 gigawatts were added, although major investments in China and Europe are raising that number.
This will require investments of around US$5-trillion by 2030, or about 2 per cent of world GDP – about double what humans are currently spending. The world is on track to meet about 85 per cent of this required renewable growth, in large part thanks to Chinese investments. In fact, one clear way for liberal democracies to win popular support back from the autocrats is to start outdoing them in climate investment.
Most estimates say the world will need to retire or retrofit perhaps two billion internal-combustion passenger cars by 2050. Electric cars now represent around 25 per cent of light vehicle sales worldwide, up from 14 per cent in 2022. Half of that production was in China, and a quarter of it in Europe; the United States and India have lagged behind. Charging infrastructure and battery production will also require enormous public and private investments.
Some of the biggest opportunities come from our pending need to de-carbonize commercial land and sea transportation (the latter is estimated to require a trillion dollars in investment by 2050), steel and concrete making, and eventually air travel – some of which still require the development of new technologies. If we are unable to electrify some of those sectors, we will need to invest even more heavily in carbon capture and CO2 removal, an underperforming sector that will require even more trillions of investment.
Because we have waited until the crisis is upon us, some of our largest investments – and our least optional investments – will be needed not to prevent but to protect us from the effects of the warming and ocean-level rises that will happen regardless. Massive sea barriers will be needed in most maritime cities. Drought-resistant crops will need to be engineered and cultivated throughout large regions, as well as new irrigation solutions and urban infrastructure.
The notion of investing an estimated US$150-trillion over 30 years may sound implausible, especially after the devastating political and economic events of 2025. But that ignores the fact that most worldwide economic activity in the coming decades will contribute to this goal, directly or indirectly. About half the world’s economies, according to estimates by the Energy and Carbon Intelligence Unit, are now “absolute carbon decoupled” – that is, every dollar of economic growth in those countries now causes a decrease, rather than a rise, in greenhouse-gas emissions (because most investments result in the replacement of ecologically inefficient technology). China and most of Europe are there; Canada is just barely decoupled but faltering; the United States is not, although a return to its 2024 policies would soon get it there.
That illustrates why the ecological crisis is so intimately tied to the political crisis; it also suggests why a decade of democratic backsliding is unlikely to hold. Tariffs and closed borders and military misadventures don’t just choke off growth and lower living standards – they choke up the atmosphere.
Sooner or later, an excluded generation will begin to clear the air, and step clear of the wreckage. The rest of us ought to stop apologizing to them, and get ready to thank them.
This article was written by Ty Oneil and was published in the Globe & Mail on December 26, 2025.
Roads in the 5,000-resident California town of Wrightwood were covered in rocks, debris and thick mud on Thursday. With power out, a gas station and coffee shop running on generators were serving as hubs for residents and visitors.
A day ago, heavy rain and fierce winds were blamed for at least two deaths
California, soaked from days of relentless rain and recovering from mudslides in mountain towns, was hit with another powerful storm Christmas Day that led to evacuation warnings and high surf advisories.
The San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department in Southern California issued an evacuation warning for Wrightwood, a mountain town about 130 kilometres northeast of Los Angeles, a day after rescuing people trapped in cars during a mud slide.
The National Weather Service said waves near the San Francisco Bay Area could reach up to 7.6 metres Friday.
Statewide, more than 70,000 people were without power Thursday afternoon, according to PowerOutage.us.
A day ago, heavy rain and fierce winds were blamed for at least two deaths.
A major storm system moving toward the Midwest and Northeast was expected to interfere with travel, according to the National Weather Service.
A mix of freezing rain and sleet could create icy conditions in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Maryland. Forecasters warned heavy ice could cause outages. Snow was expected to blanket the Northeast early Friday
Roads in the 5,000-resident California town of Wrightwood were covered in rocks, debris and thick mud on Thursday. With power out, a gas station and coffee shop running on generators were serving as hubs for residents and visitors.
“It’s really a crazy Christmas,” said Jill Jenkins, who was spending the holiday with her 13-year-old grandson, Hunter Lopiccolo.
Hunter said the family almost evacuated the previous day, when water washed away a chunk of their backyard. But they decided to stay and still celebrated the holiday. Hunter got a new snowboard and e-bike.
“We just played card games all night with candles and flashlights,” he said.
Davey Schneider hiked 1.6 kilometres through rain and flood water up to his shins from his Wrightwood residence Wednesday to rescue cats from his grandfather’s house, walking through flood water up to his shins as it rained.
“I wanted to help them out because I wasn’t confident that they were going to live,” Mr. Schneider said Thursday. “Fortunately, they all lived. They’re all okay – just a little bit scared.”
Arlene Corte said roads in town turned into rivers, but her house was not damaged.
“It could be a whole lot worse,” she said. “We’re here talking.”
With more rain on the way, more than 150 firefighters were stationed in the area, said San Bernardino County Fire spokesman Shawn Millerick. “We’re ready,” he said. “It’s all hands on deck at this point.”
A falling tree killed a San Diego man Wednesday, news outlets reported. Farther north, a Sacramento sheriff’s deputy died in what appeared to be a weather-related crash.
Areas along the coast, including Malibu, were under a flood watch until Friday afternoon, and wind and flood advisories were issued for much of the Sacramento Valley and the San Francisco Bay Area.
The storms were the result of atmospheric rivers carrying massive plumes of moisture from the tropics during one of the busiest travel weeks of the year.
Southern California typically gets 1.3 to 2.5 centimetres of rain this time of year, but this week many areas could see between 10 to 20 centimetres, with even more in the mountains, National Weather Service meteorologist Mike Wofford said.
More heavy snow was expected in the Sierra Nevada, where gusts created “near whiteout conditions” and made mountain pass travel treacherous. Officials said there was a “high” avalanche risk around Lake Tahoe and a winter storm warning was in effect through Friday.
Ski resorts around Lake Tahoe recorded about 30 to 91 centimetres of snow overnight, said Tyler Salas, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Reno. Forecasters expect to see up to another 91 centimetres of snow through Friday, Mr. Salas said. The area could see 72-km/h gusts in low elevation areas and 161-km/h winds along mountain ridges.
Governor Gavin Newsom declared emergencies in six counties to allow state assistance.
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