It seems to me that Mark Carney is acting just as you would expect if you elect a mainstream economist and central banker as prime minister.
Trevor Hancock
June 28, 2026
I have noted several times recently in these columns that Mark Carney’s mandate letter to his cabinet a year ago does not identify the environment as one of the government’s seven priorities; indeed, the word ‘environment’ is not even mentioned. Now we can begin to see the consequences of this very deliberate omission.
Let’s start with climate change, which the World Health Organization (WHO) has recognized for some years as “the single biggest health threat facing humanity.” More recently, in May, the Pan-European Commission on Climate and Health, convened by the European Regional Director for the WHO, called climate change “a catastrophic threat to human health, security and social stability” and called on the WHO “to formally declare climate change as a public health emergency of international concern.”
That puts climate change in the same threat category as COVID, Ebola, and other infectious disease outbreaks that the WHO has declared public health emergencies. In fact, I would argue that it is a greater threat than any of these; as Carney himself said back in 2019, in his role as the UN special envoy for climate action, climate change is “the world’s greatest existential threat.”
So you would think he would act on that belief. But what has Carney actually done? A CBC news item on June 16 listed the following: “Eliminating the consumer carbon tax. Reversing the implementation of the oil and gas emissions cap. Scrapping the electric vehicle sales mandate. Doubling down on fossil fuel subsidies for LNG and enhanced oil recovery. Charting plans to turn Canada into one of the largest suppliers of LNG in the world. Backing the construction of a potential bitumen pipeline to the West Coast.”
Small wonder that in November 2025, Climate Action Tracker, an independent scientific project that tracks government climate action, “downgraded Canada’s overall rating to ‘Highly Insufficient,’ primarily due to weakened policy ambition, slow implementation, and a widening gap between current emissions levels and Canada’s 2030 target” — and that was seven months ago.
Then, in February, the Canadian Climate Institute reported that Canada “is not on track to meet any of its climate goals, including its 2035 target and net zero emissions by 2050.”
You can almost hear Steven Guilbeault, the former environment and climate change minister who quit Carney’s Cabinet, in his recent interview on CBC Radio’s The Current on June 17, wondering, “Who is this man, and what have they done with Mark Carney?”
If it were only climate change, that would be enough to condemn Carney as a hypocrite. But it gets worse. The government just rushed through changes to Canada’s pesticide laws in an omnibus budget bill that was only reviewed by the finance committees of the Commons and the Senate, not by Parliament’s health or environment committees.
In a June 18 statement, a large number of major environmental and health organizations condemned the move because these “amendments grant cabinet broad authority to overrule the Health Minister and permit the use of any pesticide found to have unacceptable environmental risks.” As the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment noted, these amendments mean “Canada’s pesticide law will be based on financial considerations rather than health and the environment,” adding: “Science doesn’t disappear when it’s inconvenient; evidence of harm must outweigh short-term economic considerations.”
Then there are the Carney government’s moves to weaken key environmental standards under the Species at Risk Act and Impact Assessment Act. A June 3 article in The Conversation by three leaders of the Canadian Society for Ecology and Evolution raises concerns that “the reforms proposed in ‘Getting Major Projects Built’ ” — a recently released federal government discussion paper — “could threaten natural environments, species-at-risk and human health for generations.”
So back to the question in my headline: Why is Mark Carney undermining our environment? I don’t know, but it seems to me he is acting just as you would expect if you elect a mainstream economist and central banker as prime minister. When push comes to shove, the economy matters and the environment loses. Yet as I noted in a recent column, when the environment loses, we all lose.
That is a lesson Mark Carney seems not to have learned.
Trevor Hancock
June 28, 2026
I have noted several times recently in these columns that Mark Carney’s mandate letter to his cabinet a year ago does not identify the environment as one of the government’s seven priorities; indeed, the word ‘environment’ is not even mentioned. Now we can begin to see the consequences of this very deliberate omission.
Let’s start with climate change, which the World Health Organization (WHO) has recognized for some years as “the single biggest health threat facing humanity.” More recently, in May, the Pan-European Commission on Climate and Health, convened by the European Regional Director for the WHO, called climate change “a catastrophic threat to human health, security and social stability” and called on the WHO “to formally declare climate change as a public health emergency of international concern.”
That puts climate change in the same threat category as COVID, Ebola, and other infectious disease outbreaks that the WHO has declared public health emergencies. In fact, I would argue that it is a greater threat than any of these; as Carney himself said back in 2019, in his role as the UN special envoy for climate action, climate change is “the world’s greatest existential threat.”
So you would think he would act on that belief. But what has Carney actually done? A CBC news item on June 16 listed the following: “Eliminating the consumer carbon tax. Reversing the implementation of the oil and gas emissions cap. Scrapping the electric vehicle sales mandate. Doubling down on fossil fuel subsidies for LNG and enhanced oil recovery. Charting plans to turn Canada into one of the largest suppliers of LNG in the world. Backing the construction of a potential bitumen pipeline to the West Coast.”
Small wonder that in November 2025, Climate Action Tracker, an independent scientific project that tracks government climate action, “downgraded Canada’s overall rating to ‘Highly Insufficient,’ primarily due to weakened policy ambition, slow implementation, and a widening gap between current emissions levels and Canada’s 2030 target” — and that was seven months ago.
Then, in February, the Canadian Climate Institute reported that Canada “is not on track to meet any of its climate goals, including its 2035 target and net zero emissions by 2050.”
You can almost hear Steven Guilbeault, the former environment and climate change minister who quit Carney’s Cabinet, in his recent interview on CBC Radio’s The Current on June 17, wondering, “Who is this man, and what have they done with Mark Carney?”
If it were only climate change, that would be enough to condemn Carney as a hypocrite. But it gets worse. The government just rushed through changes to Canada’s pesticide laws in an omnibus budget bill that was only reviewed by the finance committees of the Commons and the Senate, not by Parliament’s health or environment committees.
In a June 18 statement, a large number of major environmental and health organizations condemned the move because these “amendments grant cabinet broad authority to overrule the Health Minister and permit the use of any pesticide found to have unacceptable environmental risks.” As the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment noted, these amendments mean “Canada’s pesticide law will be based on financial considerations rather than health and the environment,” adding: “Science doesn’t disappear when it’s inconvenient; evidence of harm must outweigh short-term economic considerations.”
Then there are the Carney government’s moves to weaken key environmental standards under the Species at Risk Act and Impact Assessment Act. A June 3 article in The Conversation by three leaders of the Canadian Society for Ecology and Evolution raises concerns that “the reforms proposed in ‘Getting Major Projects Built’ ” — a recently released federal government discussion paper — “could threaten natural environments, species-at-risk and human health for generations.”
So back to the question in my headline: Why is Mark Carney undermining our environment? I don’t know, but it seems to me he is acting just as you would expect if you elect a mainstream economist and central banker as prime minister. When push comes to shove, the economy matters and the environment loses. Yet as I noted in a recent column, when the environment loses, we all lose.
That is a lesson Mark Carney seems not to have learned.
