Mark Carney – Neoliberal Climate Gas-lighter

For those who care about people and the planet, it is right to be concerned about the prospect of a Pierre Poilievre government. But new PM Mark Carney does not represent a real alternative.

 

He won the Liberal leadership race by a landslide, riding a resurgent wave of Liberal fortunes in response to Trump’s tariffs and 51st state rhetoric. He is touted as a political outsider, never having run for or won a seat in an election.

 

But on economic and climate policy, he is very much an insider.

 

He advised Goldman Sachs – helping them profit during the 1998 Russian economic crisis; he chaired the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England – bailing out bankers, and serving up austerity; he served as UN Special Envoy for Climate Action and Finance – pushing inadequate market-based climate solutions; he advised former PM Justin Trudeau during the Covid-19 pandemic – bailing out bosses and bankers again.

 

He has said he wants an environmentally sustainable economy, echoing Trudeau who used this as cover for pipeline building and increased fossil fuel production.

 

In his leadership run, Carney said that the “current climate policy has become too divisive” with "Canada now under attack”, pledging a “new, more effective climate plan that everyone can get behind."

 

He signed an order in council reducing the consumer carbon tax rate to zero on day one as PM, thereby fulfilling a leadership campaign promise. His new plan will “create a system of incentives to reward Canadians for making greener choices."

 

But this is neoliberal gaslighting, putting the onus on individuals to change, instead of implementing the bold policies needed to face down this existential planetary threat.

 

Pipelines and Resistance

 

In these times of Donald Trump's attacks, pressure to build pipeline capacity to reduce reliance on US markets is mounting. Eric Nuttal, a senior partner at investment management firm Ninepoint Partners, said in early February “if we had built out more pipelines over the past nine to 10 years and not been sending 97 per cent of our oil to the United States, then we’d be in a much, much stronger, position.” He criticized Trudeau government policies as “guided by eco-evangelism versus pragmatism.”

 

But governmental “eco-evangelism” is not the reason more pipelines haven’t been built. After all, Trudeau bought the TMX pipeline and has overseen a 30% expansion of fossil fuel production during his tenure.

 

It is grassroots climate movements, led by Indigenous land defenders, that has slowed or prevented more pipelines and even higher production levels.

 

The resistance of the Wet’suwet’en Hereditary Chiefs and land defenders has delayed the building of the CGL pipeline to tidewater in B.C. It was the BC NDP government that sent RCMP onto their land multiple times to enforce a BC court injunction.

 

Mi’kmaq communities in New Brunswick led a broad resistance that shut down fracking there.

 

Indigenous peoples from at least 70 different Indigenous nations intervened to shut down the Energy East diluted bitumen pipeline linking western provinces to the east coast.

 

Kanien'kehá:ka (Mohawk), Cree and Innu peoples led the resistance that shut down the Énergie Saguenay LNG pipeline in Quebec.

 

But recent events have shown the danger. An Angus-Reid poll from early February reported public support for Energy East was 65%, up 6 points from 2019. And François Legault’s Quebec government has spoken recently of reviving Énergie Saguenay.

 

And the push for new pipelines like the Prince Rupert Gas Transmission (fracked gas) Pipeline on Gitxsan land north of Wet’suwet’en is ongoing.

 

The New Plan – same as the old plan (but worse)

 

This moment of “Canada now under attack” is being exploited by corporate Canada to fan the flames of the climate crisis that is accelerating towards planetary conflagration.

 

Mark Carney’s “new, more effective climate plan” will do nothing to confront pipeline and fossil fuel development and will continue Liberal hypocrisy through subsidizing rising fossil fuel production, facilitating further pipeline development, gaming UN emissions targets by exporting oil and gas while tinkering with ineffective carbon pricing, markets, offsets and incentives.

 

At his first press conference as PM he confirmed this by promising “more money in Canadians' pockets by ensuring that government spends less so that Canada can invest more.” Thus, more tax cuts for the rich and no bold new programs for an energy transition. And his purported ambition to make “Canada a superpower in both conventional and clean energies” will continue to rely on market mechanisms.

 

After talks with Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, he pledged to work with the fossil fuel industry and provinces to achieve emissions reductions “as opposed to having preset caps”.

 

He pledged to cut red tape to expedite major “nation building” projects such as high speed rail, hydroelectricity grids and east-west pipelines and end duplications in provincial and federal environmental assessments.

 

This aligns with Doug Ford’s calls for “wrongheaded” and “redundant” federal environmental impact assessments for critical mineral mining projects in the so-called “ring of fire” to be scrapped.

 

These mining developments are already being resisted by the historic Land Defense Alliance of First Nations to protect their traditional territories in Treaty 9 territory for future generations.

 

Alvin Fiddler, the grand chief of Nishnawbe Aski Nation (NAN), which encompasses Treaty 9 and Treaty 5 First Nations, criticized Poilievre’s calls to fast-track mining developments for ignoring “our rights and our connection to the land."

 

The NDP supports critical mineral mining as well, with Sudbury federal NDP candidate Nadia Verrelli describing it as “essential to creating good Canadian jobs” to build the green economy. “Pierre Poilievre wants to bulldoze right through rights holders” she said, but the NDP would “unlock the Ring of Fire” by “getting free, prior and informed consent” from Indigenous nations.

 

Free, prior and informed consent is a principle included in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), which only exists because of decades of struggle by Indigenous peoples worldwide.

 

But a recent federal court ruling demonstrated its limitations under Canadian law.

 

The court ruled in favour of Kebaowek First Nation when they challenged the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission’s approval of a nuclear disposal facility at Chalk River, ON for breaching their constitutional obligations to uphold UNDRIP. But the court also denied this gave Kebaowek a veto, merely requiring the Commission to implement an “enhanced approach to consultation” accounting for “Kebaowek’s laws, knowledge and processes” aimed at achieving mutual agreement. 

 

Thus there is greater hope for defeating this destructive proposal in expanding the alliances that have been made with local communities, non-profits and working class people to take collective action than relying on settler colonial laws.

 

Farther west, a newly announced nuclear waste burial site near Dryden, ON is being opposed by the “We the Nuclear Free North - Tataganabiwiin” coalition along similar lines.

 

New PM – same energy policy

 

Since 1990, Liberal and Tory governments have overseen a 150% rise of Canadian fossil fuel production, whether or not they acknowledged the climate crisis. The only blips in this development were the economic crisis of 2008 and the 2020 pandemic.

 

The April 28th federal election pits climate denialist Pierre Poilievre against climate gaslighter Mark Carney. The meekness and complicity of the NDP means despite grassroots political polarization, the mainstream political spectrum is shifting to the right.

 

Under a Carney government this rightward shift would continue.

 

Climate scientists are clear that the production and consumption of fossil fuels must fall rapidly to prevent the escalating climate catastrophes of extreme weather, floods, droughts, heat domes and wildfires that lead inevitably to planetary climate breakdown.

 

International climate meetings and government commitments have failed to halt the rise of greenhouse gas pollution. The nations represented claim to seek climate solutions but are locked in global economic, political and military competition, where control of fossil fuels is a major strategic and tactical advantage.

 

The imperative of resistance across borders

 

Indigenous peoples, workers and racialized communities globally do not benefit from this system.

 

Trump has issued executive orders removing barriers to pipeline building, fracking and mining in the US.

 

Texas company Energy Transfer has won a $660 million verdict in its lawsuit against Greenpeace for leading protests at Standing Rock to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline which happened a decade ago. An appeal is being launched, but the outcome is far from certain. As Greenpeace senior legal advisor Deepa Padmanabha has said this is “an obvious and blatant erasure of Indigenous leadership, of Indigenous resistance” led by LaDonna Brace Bull Allard, an elder of the Standing Rock Sioux Lakota and Dakota Nation. Greenpeace was one of many supporting groups. A broad movement came together to support this struggle confronting the US Army Corps of Engineers.

 

Padmanabha continued, saying it was also “an attack on the broader movement and all of our First Amendment rights to free speech and peaceful protest.”

 

In a tragic irony, Canadian elites have responded to the “Canada now under attack” moment by ramping up planet killing pipeline, oil, gas and mining projects that Trump would pursue if he took control.

 

Indigenous peoples will struggle to defend their lands. It is imperative that these Indigenous sovereignty struggles be supported broadly by workers, students, social justice and environmental campaigners. The dynamics of capitalism and imperialism threaten the ecosystems that all life, including humans, depend on. Theese dynamics also drive attacks on Indigenous peoples, workers and students and threaten public services while prices for the necessities of life continue to rise.

 

Forging the links between these struggles can open up new possibilities for a politics of solidarity across borders that can puncture the planet killing false dichotomy between corporate climate denialism and gas lighting with real action for climate justice.