Most Canadians know that Prime Minister Mark Carney entered politics with significant experience as an economist and central banker.
But perhaps less well known is Carney’s pre-political role in the fight for climate action.
“The challenges posed by climate change today pale in importance compared to what could come,” Carney said in a historical speech at Lloyd’s of London insurance company in 2015, while he was director of the Bank of England. “While there is still time to act, the window of opportunity is finite and narrowing.”
For years, Carney used his economic credibility to draw global attention to the growing financial costs of global warming and the opportunities of the energy transition.
The 2015 speech “was one of the first times a serious economist discussed climate change as a real risk,” Julie Segal, senior climate finance manager at advocacy group Environmental Defence, told CBC News.
But in that speech, Carney also emphasized his line: “It’s not up to a central banker to defend one policy response over another. That’s up to governments to decide.”
Ten years later, as Prime Minister, Carney has dismantled the Canadian carbon consumer pricing mechanism, froze its electric vehicle mandates and the emissions limit (the first in the G7, which will come into force in 2030) can be fired any day.
It has also supported a significant expansion of LNG exports and controversial carbon capture technology and opened the door to new pipe discussions with Alberta Premier Danielle Smith and US President Donald Trump.
The Prime Minister’s Office has yet to confirm whether Carney will attend COP30 (the annual UN climate negotiations) in Brazil early next month.
“What happened to you?” Bloomberg journalist Mishal Husain recently Carney asked in an interview for his podcast, specifically referring to climate action.
“I’m the same me. I’m focused on the same issues,” he said.
Pending the climate competitiveness strategy the government has promised to implement in next month’s budget, some are becoming cautious about Carney’s priorities.
“As an individual who has built a successful reputation for his knowledge of climate change, business and economics, the current focus on avoiding climate mitigation does not add up,” Segal said.
Climate finance pioneer
Following terms as head of the Bank of Canada and then the Bank of England, Carney took on a specific climate role at the UN in 2019, as well as a leadership role in environmental, social and governance (ESG) investing at Brookfield Asset Management in 2020.
He credited his time at the Bank of England – overseeing the insurance industry – with making him aware of the financial threat of climate change.
In an interview with CBC News senior political correspondent Rosemary Barton, the United Nations special envoy for climate action and finance, Mark Carney said we all have to act on climate change because ultimately we will all be affected.
“I, like many others, have been aware of the problem for a long time. I felt that, on the side, I was helping with recycling and conservation and other aspects,” Carney reflected in 2021. “But, frankly, I assumed they were taking care of the climate, that ‘they’ were taking care of it. And then at some point I realized that I was part of ‘them’ and they weren’t taking care of themselves.”
In 2021 he published the book. Values)who advocated an economy based on justice and sustainability. He also continued to leverage his credibility to encourage private sector participation in climate action.
As part of the effort to mobilize the financial sector, Carney took on another leadership role, co-chairing a new initiative at the COP meetings in Scotland in 2021. The Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ) was a first-of-its-kind collective of banks, insurers and asset owners fighting for a net zero financial system.
At the time of its launch, Carney called GFANZ “the breakthrough in climate finance integration the world needs… [it] will act as a strategic forum to ensure that the financial system works together to broaden, deepen and accelerate the transition to a net zero economy.”
Partly due to a changing political landscape, GFANZ has since collapsed, with the collapse of their banking alliance This month, the subgroup broadly considered the death knell for Carney’s initiative.
Waiting values
As prime minister, Carney has promised Canadians that his government has a climate plan.
At Liberal caucus meetings in Edmonton in September, Carney said the government “recognizes that addressing climate change is not just a moral duty… it is also an economic imperative for the competitiveness of our businesses and the workers they employ.”
He reiterated that promise in a speech on nation-building at the University of Ottawa on Tuesday, saying a climate strategy would be revealed when his government presents its budget on Nov. 4.
However, skepticism persists. At those September meetings, a group of Liberal MPs formed an environmental group to ensure climate change was not excluded from the political agenda. While maintaining faith in Carney’s leadership, a couple of members expressed concern to CBC News about its environmental commitment.
“People don’t understand how someone who has championed climate issues for 15 years can suddenly become prime minister of a G7 country and stop talking about climate change,” said one Liberal MP, on condition that his name not be revealed. “What’s happening?”
Chris Severson-Baker, executive director of the Pembina Institute, said he’s not surprised by Carney’s approach so far.
“Groups like ours are eagerly awaiting decisions, some of which may be reflected in the budget that is about to be released,” he said.
An important one, Severson-Baker said, will be Carney’s commitment to strengthening the industrial carbon pricing regime, which charges big emitters, such as the cement and oil industries, for exceeding emissions limits.
“It’s critical to how Canada is addressing climate change. It’s kind of a mechanism that does most of the heavy lifting, if you will, in terms of reducing emissions,” Severson-Baker said. “But it is also in dire need of repair.”
In September, the Canadian Climate Institute projected that Canada’s 2030 emissions reduction target is now out of reach. The organization blamed the weakening of politics.
Segal said he is concerned about the Canadian government’s lack of detail and transparency about its climate plan.
“The current government is not committing to plans for interim climate targets,” he said. “We can certainly be pragmatic about changing policies, but they have to legitimately and mathematically lead to reducing emissions to zero by 2050. That has not been proven.”
Severson-Baker said she still has faith that the government understands its responsibility to create strong climate policy.
“Nothing I’ve seen so far… suggests that they think the role of addressing climate change falls to others,” he said.
But Severson-Baker acknowledged that tariffs and the cost of living are major concerns for Canadians.
“I think it’s going to take a little bit of time to think about exactly how to accomplish those multiple goals at the same time.”
In an interview with the UN in 2021, Carney said: “I’m not a politician, but I’ve worked with them many times. When constituents ask questions, it’s very powerful.”
He warned: “Don’t assume your politician cares about this issue as much as you do. But he will, the more you and others raise it with him.”
Environmental advocates and even people within Carney’s own party have expressed concerns about his seriousness about the climate.
The question is whether he thinks Canadians want him to treat it with the same urgency as he did a decade ago.
