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2025 Federal Election

Don’t double-down on net zero again

Published

2 days ago

8 minute read

From the Fraser Institute

By Bjørn Lomborg

In the preamble to the Paris Agreement, world leaders loftily declared they would keep temperature rises “well below 2°C” and perhaps even under 1.5°C. That was never on the cards—it would have required the world’s economies to effectively come to a grinding halt.

The truth is that the “net zero” green agenda, based on massive subsidies and expensive legislation, will likely cost more than CAD$38 trillion per year across the century, making it utterly unattractive to voters in almost every nation on Earth.

When President Trump withdrew the United States from the Paris Climate Agreement for the first time in 2017, then-Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was quick to claim the moral high ground, declaring that “we will continue to work with our domestic and international partners to drive progress on one of the greatest challenges we face as a world.”

Trudeau has now been swept from the stage. On his first day back in office, President Trump signed an executive order that again begins the formal, twelve-month-long process of withdrawing the United States from the Paris Agreement.

It will be tempting for Canada to step anew into the void left by the United States. But if the goal is to make effective climate policy, whoever is Canada’s prime minister needs to avoid empty virtue signaling. It would be easy for Canada to declare again that it’ll form a “coalition of the willing” with Europe. The truth is that, just like last time, that approach would do next to nothing for the planet.

Climate summits have generated vast amounts of attention and breathless reporting giving the impression that they are crucial to the planet’s survival. Scratch the surface, and the results are far less impressive. In 2021, the world promised to phase-down coal. Since then, global coal consumption has only gone up. Virtually every summit has promised to cut emissions but they’ve increased almost every single year, and 2024 reached a new high.

Way before the Paris Agreement was inked, the Kyoto Protocol was once sold as a key part of the solution to global warming. Yet studies show it achieved virtually nothing for climate change.

In the preamble to the Paris Agreement, world leaders loftily declared they would keep temperature rises “well below 2°C” and perhaps even under 1.5°C. That was never on the cards—it would have required the world’s economies to effectively come to a grinding halt.

The truth is that the “net zero” green agenda, based on massive subsidies and expensive legislation, will likely cost more than CAD$38 trillion per year across the century, making it utterly unattractive to voters in almost every nation on Earth.

The awkward reality is that emissions from Canada, the EU, and other countries pursuing climate policies matter little in the 21st century. Canada likely only makes up about 1.5 per cent of the world’s emissions. Add together Canada’s output with that of every single country of the rich-world OECD, and this only makes up about one-fifth of global emissions this century, using the United Nations’ ‘middle of the road’ forecast. The other four-fifths of emissions come mostly from China, India and Africa.

Even if wealthy countries like Canada impoverish themselves, the result is tiny — run the UN’s standard climate model with and without Canada going net-zero in 2050, and the difference is immeasurable even in 2100. Moreover, much of the production and emissions just move to the Global South—and even less is achieved.

One good example of this is the United Kingdom, which—like Prime Minister Trudeau once did—has leaned into climate policies, suggesting it would lead the efforts for strong climate agreements. British families are paying a heavy price for their government going farther than almost any other in pursuing the climate agenda: just the inflation-adjusted electricity price, weighted across households and industry, has tripled from 2003 to 2023, mostly because of climate policies. This need not have been so: the US electricity price has remained almost unchanged over the same period.

The effect on families is devastating. Had prices stayed at 2003 levels, an average family-of-four would now be spending CAD$3,380 on electricity—which includes indirect industry costs. Instead, it now pays $9,740 per year.

Rising electricity costs make investment less attractive: European businesses pay triple US electricity costs, and nearly two-thirds of European companies say energy prices are now a major impediment to investment.

The Paris Treaty approach is fundamentally flawed. Carbon emissions continue to grow because cheap, reliable power, mostly from fossil fuels, drives economic growth. Wealthy countries like Canada, the US, and European Union members have started to cut emissions—often by shifting production elsewhere—but the rest of the world remains focused on eradicating poverty.

Poor countries will rightly reject making carbon cuts unless there is a huge flow of “climate aid” from rich nations, and want trillions of US dollars per year. That won’t happen. The new US government will not pay, and the other rich countries cannot foot the bill alone.

Without these huge transfers of wealth, China, India and many other developing countries will disavow expensive climate policies, too. This potentially leaves a rag-tag group led by a few Western European progressive nations, which can scarcely afford their own policies and have no ability to pay off everyone else.

When the United States withdrew from the Paris Agreement in 2017, Canada’s doubling down on the Paris Treaty sent the signal that it would be worthwhile spending hundreds of trillions of dollars to make no real difference to temperatures. We fool ourselves if we pretend that doing so for a second time will help the planet.

We need to realize that fixing climate change isn’t about sanctimonious summits, lofty speeches, and bluster. In coming weeks I’ll outline the case for efficient policies like innovation, adaptation and prosperity.

Bjørn Lomborg

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CSIS Warned Beijing Would Brand Conservatives as Trumpian. Now Carney’s Campaign Is Doing It.

Published on April 14, 2025

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Sam Cooper

Canadian intelligence reported in 2021 that Beijing planned to interfere in Canada’s next federal election with disinformation suggesting the Conservatives “will follow the path of … Donald Trump”—a narrative now echoed in a clandestine dirty tricks operation exposed inside Prime Minister Mark Carney’s campaign.

A 2021 CSIS intelligence bulletin marked “Secret,” warned that Chinese consular officials planned to influence future Canadian elections by portraying Conservative politicians as “Trump-like” and hostile to immigrants. The document has been redacted by The Bureau.

The warning comes from a classified CSIS bulletin dated December 20, 2021 and marked Secret, distributed to Canadian departments including Global Affairs Canada, the Privy Council Office, the Communications Security Establishment, and Five Eyes intelligence partners. The report was based on information from Chinese consular officials in Canada.

According to the CSIS assessment, a consulate official in mid-November 2021 discussed how Chinese influence in federal ridings with large Chinese-Canadian populations had proven effective, and laid out a forward-looking strategy to shape future electoral outcomes. The official reportedly stated:

“Ethnic Chinese voters should be told that if the CPC wins a federal election, the CPC will follow the path of former United States President Donald Trump and ban Chinese students from certain universities or educational programs. This will threaten the future of the voters’ children.”

The consulate official also suggested that during Canada’s next federal election, the message should be circulated that the Conservative Party of Canada “is critical of the PRC and opposed to individuals from mainland China.” The remarks were made shortly after Justin Trudeau’s Liberals won a minority government in the fall of 2021.

CSIS concluded that PRC officials believed Chinese immigrants were relatively easy to influence toward Beijing’s geopolitical goals and could be mobilized to oppose Canada’s Conservative Party. The bulletin describes a broader context in which Chinese state actors sought to paint Canadian Conservatives as hostile to immigrants, aligned with Trump-style nationalism.

The Bureau’s analysis suggests that if Chinese state-linked actors intended to repeat this narrative in the 2025 federal campaign, they would find their narrative echoed by the Liberal Party’s own war room tactics.

Prime Minister Mark Carney this morning acknowledged wrongdoing inside his campaign, following revelations that Liberal operatives had planted fake political buttons at a major Conservative conference in an effort to smear Pierre Poilievre’s campaign as a Trump-style threat to Canada.

The Liberal Party has attempted to downplay the scandal, calling it an instance of overzealous political operatives getting “carried away.” But the parallels to Beijing’s 2021 disinformation strategy—as outlined in the CSIS bulletin—raise broader concerns over domestic political campaigns echoing or amplifying hostile state narratives.

The disinformation scandal was first exposed by CBC News on Sunday, April 13. According to the report, two Liberal staffers attended the Canada Strong and Free Networking Conference last week. Observers have noted ticket prices for the event cost hundreds of dollars, suggesting the Liberal infiltration was well planned and resourced. They scattered buttons reading “Stop the Steal” along with buttons favouring Alberta secession movements and other political messages that would suggest Pierre Poilievre’s campaign is attracting MAGA-like extremists in Canada that may be open to Trump’s earlier jibes of turning Canada into a “51st State.”

The aim was to create the appearance of Trumpian division and election denialism within Poilievre’s camp.

Asked about the scandal at a press conference today, Prime Minister Carney said: “The responsible people have been reassigned within the campaign.”

But the half-apology has failed to quell public concern.

The concerns extend well beyond party politics, in The Bureau’s analysis. Two weeks ago, Canada’s Security and Intelligence Threats to Elections (SITE) Task Force identified a sophisticated PRC information campaign targeting Chinese-language social media in Canada. On March 10 and March 25, the WeChat account Youli-Youmian, linked to Chinese Communist Party propaganda efforts, shared widely amplified posts portraying Mark Carney in a highly favorable light.

One post, titled “The US encounters a ‘tough guy’ Prime Minister,” framed Carney as standing up to Donald Trump’s tariff threats.

According to SITE, both posts were rapidly boosted by a coordinated cluster of 30 smaller WeChat accounts, garnering between 85,000 and 130,000 interactions and as many as three million views. SITE attributed the surge to a broader PRC information operation.

At the SITE briefing Monday, The Bureau questioned whether the task force would investigate the Carney campaign’s “ButtonGate” scandal as potential domestic election interference—especially given the operation echoed a PRC disinformation playbook from 2021 that falsely depicted the Conservatives as Trump-style extremists. The question also raised whether SITE had the capacity to examine any crossover between this Liberal narrative and a broader foreign campaign.

A SITE spokesperson replied cautiously: “National security agencies take any attempt to undermine our democracy really seriously… Not all disinformation is foreign-backed… but SITE is committed to informing Canadians when emerging issues can be linked to foreign state actors.”

The official did not say whether SITE would investigate the Liberal Party’s role in the disinformation campaign.

In the same session, a National Post reporter asked SITE whether they were minimizing the implications of PRC-linked social media accounts appearing to promote Mark Carney.

“There was a lot of talk about the information that was put out,” the reporter said. “But there was also a fair amount of interpretation by many online that viewed the posts in question on WeChat as China endorsing Mark Carney or promoting the Liberals… trying to rig the election, or at the very least, push Chinese Canadians to vote for Mr. Carney.”

SITE responded by emphasizing its broader framing: “In our briefing, as you know, we cited both positive and negative posts. What was and remains important for us is that the Youli-Youmian account is linked to a foreign state, and the information it shared may be used to manipulate. That was what we felt was important to get across.”

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2025 Federal Election

ASK YOURSELF! – Can Canada Endure, or Afford the Economic Stagnation of Carney’s Costly Climate Vision?

Published on April 14, 2025

By

From Energy Now 

By Tammy Nemeth and Ron Wallace

Carney’s Costly Climate Vision Risks Another “Lost Liberal Decade”

A carbon border tax isn’t the simple offset it’s made out to be—it’s a complex regulatory quagmire poised to reshape Canada’s economy and trade. In its final days, the Trudeau government made commitments to mandate climate disclosures, preserve carbon taxes (both consumer and industrial) and advance a Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM). Newly minted Prime Minister Mark Carney, the godfather of climate finance, has embraced and pledged to accelerate these commitments, particularly the CBAM. Marketed as a strategic shift to bolster trade with the European Union (EU) and reduce reliance on the U.S., a CBAM appears straightforward: pay a domestic carbon price, or face an EU import fee. But the reality is far more extensive and invasive. Beyond the carbon tariffs, it demands rigorous emissions accounting, third-party verification and a crushing compliance burden.

Although it has been little debated, Carney’s proposed climate plan would transform and further undermine Canadian businesses and the economy. Contrary to Carney’s remarks in mid-March, the only jurisdiction that has implemented a CBAM is the EU, with implementation not set until 2026.  Meanwhile, the UK plans to implement a CBAM for 1 January 2027. In spite of Carney’s assertion that such a mechanism will be needed for trade with emerging Asian markets, the only Asian country that has released a possible plan for a CBAM is Taiwan. Thus, a Canadian CBAM would only align Canada with the EU and possibly the UK – assuming that those policies are implemented in face of the Trump Administrations’ turbulent tariff policies.

With the first phase of the EU’s CBAM, exporters of cement, iron and steel, aluminum, fertiliser, electricity and hydrogen must have paid a domestic carbon tax or the EU will charge more for those imports. But it’s much more than that. Even if exporting companies have a domestic carbon tax, they will still have to monitor, account for, and verify their CO2 emissions to certify the price they have paid domestically in order to trade with the EU. The purported goal is to reduce so-called “carbon leakage” which makes imports from emission-intensive sectors more costly in favour of products with fewer emissions.  Hence, the EU’s CBAM is effectively a CO2 emissions importation tariff equivalent to what would be paid by companies if the products were produced under the EU’s carbon pricing rules under their Emissions Trading System (ETS).

While that may sound simple enough, in practice the EU’s CBAM represents a significant expansion of government involvement with a new layer of bureaucracy. The EU system will require corporate emissions accounting of the direct and indirect emissions of production processes to calculate the embedded emissions. This type of emissions accounting is a central component of climate disclosures like those released by the Canadian Sustainability Standards Board.

Hence, the CBAM isn’t just a tariff: It’s a system for continuous emissions monitoring and verification. Unlike traditional tariffs tied to product value, the CBAM requires companies exporting to the EU to track embedded emissions and submit verified data to secure an EU-accredited verification. Piling complexity atop cost, importers must then file a CBAM declaration, reviewed and certified by an EU regulatory body, before obtaining an import certificate.

This system offers little discernible benefit for the environment. The CBAM ignores broader environmental regulatory efforts, fixating solely on taxation of embedded emissions. For Canadian exporters, Carney’s plan would impose an expensive, intricate web of compliance monitoring, verification and fees accompanied by uncertain administrative penalties.

Hence, any serious pivot to the EU to offset trade restrictions in the U.S. will require a transformation of Canada’s economy, one with a questionable return on investment.  Carney’s plan to diversify and accelerate trade with the EU, whose economies are increasingly shackled with burdensome climate-related policies, ignores the potential of successful trade negotiations with the U.S., India or emerging Asian countries. The U.S., our largest and most significant trading partner, has abandoned the Paris Climate Agreement, ceased defence of its climate-disclosure rule and will undoubtedly be seeking fewer, not more, climate-related tariffs. Meanwhile, despite rulings from the Supreme Court of Canada, Carney has doubled down on his support for the Trudeau governments’ Impact Assessment Act (Bill C-69) and confirmed intentions to proceed with an emissions cap on oil and gas production. Carney’s continuance of the Trudeau governments’ regulatory agenda combined with new, proposed trade policies will take Canada in directions not conducive to future economic growth or to furthering trade agreements with the U.S.

Canadians need to carefully consider whether or not Canada can endure, or afford, Carney’s costly climate vision that risks another “lost Liberal decade” of economic stagnation?

Tammy Nemeth is a U.K.-based strategic energy analyst.

Ron Wallace is an executive fellow of the Canadian Global Affairs Institute and the Canada West Foundation.

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