The slow-motion resignation of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is finally official.
After months of plunging polls, lost by-elections and an accelerating caucus revolt, Trudeau deigned to throw in the towel on his unpopular reign after a new Liberal leader is chosen sometime in the next three months.
Already there is chatter among Liberal loyalists that the new leader must shift the party to the right, with Global News reporting that many party insiders “believe Trudeau has moved the party too far to the left and that shift has played a key role in the decline of the Liberals.”
But was Trudeau’s problem that he was too progressive? His record on climate change hardly bears out that conclusion and Liberals looking for his replacement would be dead wrong if they believe Canadians don’t desire strong climate leadership.
Though Trudeau promoted himself as a global climate champion, his results are far less impressive than his carefully crafted public persona. After nine years in power, his government is nowhere near the emission cuts required to meet our international commitment to cut emissions by 40 percent below 2005 levels by 2030.
The most recent report by the country’s Commissioner of the Environment showed that Canada would need to somehow slash emissions by 33 percent in the next five years to get back on track, and “remains the worst performer among all member countries of the G7 since 1990 and 2005.” Trudeau’s ineffectual action on the climate file is one of the key reasons voters have soured so much with their once-glamorous leader.
Canada should have fared far better over the last nine years. Norway is also a northern oil exporting nation with an economy heavily dependent on fossil fuel extraction. Yet Norway was rated 50 countries ahead of Canada in international climate rankings and leads the world in electric vehicle adoption.
Recent polling shows that most Canadians from across the political spectrum support moving faster on climate action, phasing out fossil fuels and embracing renewable energy. And despite enormous ad spends by oil companies, only 35 percent of those polled said they had any degree of trust in what fossil fuel companies say.
Trudeau had a solid majority mandate in his first term and could have moved quickly to deliver on climate goals he campaigned on in the 2015 election. Canadians soon learned he was much more of a show pony than a productive work horse.
For instance, Trudeau promised to “phase out inefficient fossil fuel subsidies”—an international commitment since 2009 that was largely ignored by his predecessor Stephen Harper. This sensible policy should have had broad appeal to voters concerned about the climate emergency, and those wanting to limit government waste and market intervention.
Polling from 2018 showed “Canadians are strongly opposed to federal and provincial governments using public dollars to subsidize oil and gas companies.” Five years later the majority of British Columbians disagreed with using public money to prop up private LNG projects. A survey from last year revealed that two-thirds of Canadians want swift action to reduce oil and gas emissions.
Despite this solid public support for bold climate results, Canadians instead got policy announcements with fanfare and photo-ops and very little action.
A 2017 auditor general’s report on the newly elected Trudeau government concluded that “Environment and Climate Change Canada developed a plan” to phase out fossil fuel subsidies. “However, the department did not yet implement its plan.” Meanwhile the department of finance simply refused to provide AG investigators with requested documents.
A follow-up investigation in 2019 concluded work to even identify fossil fuel subsidies was “incomplete and not rigorous.” In 2023, Trudeau’s government re-announced its commitment to stop shoveling money at the fossil fuel sector, which that same year had reached $18.5 billion. In the preceding four years, over $65 billion in federal funds were dispensed towards oil and gas—enough to fund every major wind and solar project between 2019-21 twelve times over.
Tellingly, Trudeau’s ascendency to the highest office in the country appeared to have the backroom blessing of oil patch power power brokers who saw him as a more palatable political player than his polarizing predecessor Stephen Harper. Shortly after winning the Liberal leadership in 2012, Trudeau reassured an audience of oilmen at the Calgary Petroleum Club, “Keep an open mind. You can find friends in the most unexpected places.”
Late in the 2015 election that brought Trudeau to power, his campaign co-chair was forced to resign when it was revealed that he was also advising energy companies on how best to lobby the incoming Prime Minister as a “spear carrier” for getting new pipelines approved.
This tight relationship between Trudeau and the fossil fuel sector helps explain high-profile moments of ill-executed hypocrisy. The day after declaring a climate emergency in Canada the Trudeau government purchased the Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion (TMX) project, realizing the long-standing oil patch goal of transporting diluted Alberta bitumen to tide water.
A recent report on this expensive boondoggle showed that inadequate pipeline tolls negotiated by Ottawa mean that taxpayers will likely be out of pocket up to $18.8 billion even after the project is sold. This works out to a gift of over $1,200 per Canadian household towards the highly profitable oil patch.
Trudeau billed purchasing TMX as a nation-building project that would somehow lead to lower carbon emissions. This conceit was central to his engagement with the oil patch—get a pipeline built to tidewater in exchange for federal carbon pricing. Instead, he burned the support of voters concerned with the climate emergency while managing to become arguably even more detested in Alberta.
As noted by energy commentator Max Fawcett: “One of the deepest ironies is that he’s been the best Prime Minister for the energy sector in … basically ever … and they hate his guts for it.” Meanwhile Trudeau’s signature climate policy of carbon pricing has become so politically radioactive that even British Columbia Premier David Eby has pledged to punt the provincial carbon tax in place since 2008 if the federal scheme is eliminated.
In fairness, Trudeau has several climate accomplishments like climate accountability legislation and draft regulations to limit oil and gas emissions. Yet these important policies have become so deeply entwined with his now damaged public persona that an incoming government may pay little political price to make them disappear.
The Liberals should remember however that while Canadians are currently focused on cost-of-living issues, most still care deeply about meaningful climate action—particularly among those voters inclined to support them. Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre also has no credible climate plan, creating one of the few electoral opportunities for the Liberals to gain ground under new leadership.
Canadians clearly want to turn the page on Trudeau’s image-infatuated tenure. However, it would be a grave mistake for the Liberal party to also assume they need to jettison climate policy under the mistaken assumption that being too progressive is what led to the party’s current decline.
What the country craves is fewer selfies and more action.
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