The first thing that comes to mind when thinking of Justin Trudeau’s environmental policy is often either purchasing the Trans Mountain Pipeline (TMX) or expanding Canada’s LNG sector. Yet Jennifer Lash, a former senior advisor with Environment and Climate Change Canada, speaks of his accomplishments in the fight against climate change. In this morning’s interview, she explains the rationale behind Liberal environmental policies. As it is actually quite simple once you get the underlying theme, Cortes Currents is calling it ‘Liberal Environmental Policies for Dummies.’

Jennifer Lash: “There’s two ways that you can address climate change. One is through the policies that reduce the emissions here in Canada, and the other is by taking action to leave fossil fuels in the ground so that they’re not even extracted.”

“Both approaches have merit, so I’m not here to just say whether one is right or wrong. Both are out there, and there is a substantial part of society that’s very concerned about how much fossil fuels we’re taking out of the ground. When TMX was purchased, that provided space for the oil sands to expand.”

“When LNG is approved, it obviously increases the extraction of LNG, which is then burned in other countries. We’re all trying to meet our Paris targets; that doesn’t count emissions burned in other countries. So with the Paris Agreement, we are responsible for the emissions that we generate here in Canada. When the LNG is exported and burned in China, China has to account for those emissions. It’s just the math of how the system works. As a major oil and gas supplier globally, Canada has a moral responsibility for how much fossil fuels we put into the system.”

“There is also the argument that at this moment in time, if we leave our LNG in the ground, another country is going to take it. So it’s not like global emissions are, or the global supply of LNG is going to go down. It’s going to go up. It’s just that we leave it in the ground and don’t have the economic benefit, and another country does. That’s just the lay of the land of the issues that surround the climate debate.”

“When Trudeau came into power, he and his various environment ministers—Minister McKenna, Minister Wilkinson, and then Minister Guilbeault—all played a part in delivering these policies. They put together the first national climate plan, which was designed to reduce our emissions. We call it the PCF, the Pan-Canadian Framework on Climate Change in the Economy.”

“The ability to get all the provinces to sign onto that—namely to get Alberta to sign onto that—required a pipeline. So that was the first grand bargain that the Liberal government did with Alberta. You can say it was really bad to get TMX, and I’m leaving out all the ocean risk issues—that’s a whole other interview as a threat to the ocean—but in terms of climate, the pipeline was approved in order for us to get a national climate plan, which we did get.”

“That has been the backbone of the policies that have been implemented since 2016. The PCF was signed in 2016. It’s got some key pillars to it, including carbon pricing, which encompasses both the consumer carbon price and the industrial carbon price. It also includes a commitment to reduce methane. I’m going to jump around because it’s been updated since then.”

“Since 2016, there’s been more added. There was a commitment to do clean electricity regulations and a commitment to phase out coal-fired electricity, which we don’t really have here in British Columbia, but is huge in Alberta and Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick. Then there is a commitment to clean energy regulations, which would basically phase out unabated natural gas-fired electricity.”

“So there was a series of policies put in place to have our emissions go down. We had the clean electricity regulations. We had the zero-emissions vehicle mandate, which requires car dealerships to sell a certain percentage of electric cars. Then we have a series of programs that are there to help people like you and me electrify our homes. If you use oil or natural gas, there are programs that can provide a lot of money to buy a heat pump so that you are no longer burning natural gas.”

“Those programs are delivered by provinces, but the federal government put money into those. There’s the Greener Homes program—all these programs are designed to make it easier to reduce the need for electricity in your house, make your house more energy efficient, and then electrify. So to get off fossil fuels.”

“As a result of this suite of policies that was built over all the years, our emissions started to go down. Now, it’s always hard to talk about emissions because in 2020, when COVID hit, emissions just globally dropped. So, the graph is not a straight line at all; it’s got this huge dip in it. At 2020, emissions went way down, then they started to rebound back up, but in 2024, they started to plateau. In 2024, we were starting that downward trend again, which was really great. They never rebounded back to pre-COVID levels; they were below that. I should just say that the emissions in 2024 were the lowest Canada’s emissions had been in 24 years.”

“So, two questions arise from that. One, were we going to meet our 2030 target? And secondly, what happens after that?”

“So first of all, were we going to meet our target? It’s hard to say. Targets give you something to drive towards. When I was working in the minister’s office, it was like our North Star. We were always looking at that number and trying to figure out what additional regulations we could put in place to help us get there. But you don’t really know until you start to actually implement the policy, negotiate it, and it starts to get traction, which can take a while. We were trying very much to aim towards that; I’m not convinced we would’ve met it, but we would’ve gotten as close as we possibly could have with the tools that we had.”

“What’s happened since then? Well, the first thing Prime Minister Carney did when he got into power was get rid of the consumer carbon price. In British Columbia, the carbon price was run by the province, but Premier Eby followed suit.”

“If you look back on what Carney says, he does not say it was a bad policy; he says it was a divisive policy. Good policy requires good politics. The politics around consumer carbon pricing, was really bad. To this day, I still believe the conservatives killed what was one of our most effective climate policies.”

 “I think it was right that the Prime Minister canceled it because that’s all we were talking about. We weren’t talking about any of the other policies. We weren’t talking about how to help Canadians. We weren’t talking about how we could move towards our goals. We were just fighting over carbon pricing. That was definitely a rollback.”

“What came out of the MOU with Alberta in terms of climate policy? Well, it was the budget and then the MOU. They’re very much linked, so I’ll just refer to them in terms of the most recent announcement of the MOU. The Prime Minister and the Premier of Alberta have agreed to strengthen the industrial carbon price, which is a very, very effective regulation to reduce emissions from large emitters. It’s responsible for about 23% of our emissions reductions—very effective, but it was not designed properly.”

“It could be more effective if it was improved. I’m just going to nerd out on carbon pricing for a minute here, but with the industrial carbon price, we often talk about the price, which is set to increase to $170 by 2030. That’s called the headline price. When you put a headline price, you create a market. So people who reduce their emissions more can sell their credits, and the credit price is different from the headline price. The way the systems were set up in the different provinces, the credit price was really low, which makes the carbon pricing ineffective.”

“And so what Carney did with Alberta was he negotiated basically a credit price of $130, which is a strong credit price. That’s moving in the right direction. So there’s a lot of work to do to finalize improving the industrial carbon price, or what some people call the OBPS, but that part of the MOU with Alberta was a huge success. If we can, in fact, improve that industrial carbon price, that could make up for the emissions that we’ve lost by not having the consumer carbon price in place anymore. Fingers crossed on that.”

“The other thing he did that’s listed in the MOU with Alberta is an agreement to implement the methane regulations.”

“So Canada put in methane regulations back in 2017-2018. It’s all a blur to me. I think we did a 40% reduction below 2014 levels, and now we’re looking at a 75% reduction. So here’s an example where we put in a climate regulation, and it was so successful that we’re increasing the stringency of it. We wanted it to be done by 2030; Alberta’s agreed to 2035. So the good news is we’re getting the methane regulations. The bad news is it’s been slowed down, so we won’t see it till 2035. No regulation is ever as perfect as we want it to be. I wish we were at 2030, but at the same time, I’m relieved that we’re actually going to get it.”

“The other one that they committed to is the Canadian Energy Regulations. This one remains murky to me, and I don’t have a lot of clarity on it. There are a couple of different terms used in the MOU to describe it. Alberta likes to say they got a carve-out, but the clean electricity regulations are implemented through the Canadian Environmental Protection Act (CEPA). When CEPA sets a regulation and states you have to do A, B, and C, any province across Canada can negotiate what’s called an equivalency agreement. That province can say, ‘Look, we will meet the objectives that you’ve set, but we’re going to do it in a way that’s right for our province.’ It’s actually a very good design because every province is different, allowing for equivalency. Some of the language in the MOU suggests that they are actually doing an equivalency agreement, not a carve-out. I think there’s a lot of politics behind that, but I don’t know for sure. They refer to doing it all through pricing, and I think that’s very hard to do.”

“There’s a lot of work that the Carney government and Minister Dabrusin have to do, but I don’t think it’s as fatal for the clean electricity regulations as we’re hearing in the media right now. I’m taking a wait-and-see approach on that because the outcome will be really critical.”

“Those were the three big policies that were in the MOU that people are saying Carney’s completely rolled back and weakened climate policy. When I look under the hood, I don’t see it quite as black and white as that. I don’t see it quite as drastic unless the CER (Carbon Emission Reduction) is really bad.”

“There are a couple of other things he’s done that are interesting. One is the government commitment on interties, which increases the flow of electricity between provinces. This would be really great because when a province creates renewable energy—like BC creating renewable energy—we can sell it to Alberta, which right now is very difficult to do. I think the interties piece is really interesting.”

“There’s also the commitment to fund Pathways, a major carbon capture and storage project that the oil companies have agreed to. It’s questionable whether or not it will work to the degree they say it will, and it will be very expensive. It requires having a carbon price because the industrial carbon price is what makes it effective. There’s no economic value to building such a massive project if there isn’t a price for the product, and the product of Pathways is, in fact, carbon dioxide.”

“That’s not new. Under Justin Trudeau, we had already committed to Pathways and established the investment tax credit to support the industry. So to me, that’s not new; what is new is that its success is dependent on an oil pipeline. These are two projects that could move at different paces. It’s a bit messy in that respect—what happens if we want to start moving on Pathways but there isn’t a proponent for the oil pipeline? Do we not get to move on the Pathways project at all because we don’t have a proponent yet? It could slow the development of this Pathways project if the pipeline isn’t moving fast enough.”

“As we can see all around us, there’s massive pushback against the pipeline. So that one gets quite messy. I just want to give a shout-out to the Coastal First Nations and their amazing work standing up to Minister Hodgson and Prime Minister Carney on the tanker ban. They’ve been just as loud and succinct as I’ve always known them to be over the decades, so very impressive.”

“One other thing I should add in terms of the MOU, and this one was really disappointing to me, was the tax credit for what’s called enhanced oil recovery. This involves taking carbon capture, putting it in the ground, and using it to extract oil that you couldn’t have gotten otherwise. So it actually results in greater production. That’s going to fly under the radar for a lot of Canadians, but not for many climate activists. That one really hurt. I think it was unnecessary. I don’t think we need to be giving subsidies for oil companies to extract oil. I think that’s just ridiculous. So that’s the state of play as I see it.”

“Regarding things like the ZEV mandate that weren’t in the MOU, the government’s supposed to come out with that in the next couple of weeks. I’m hoping to see that it’s not weakened and that it’s very strong, but that’s where we stand right now.”

“We had a grand bargain with Justin Trudeau and TMX, and we got a climate plan. It got us somewhere in terms of emissions reduction; it really did. It was disappointing that we had to have a pipeline and that we have those tankers going through the Salish Sea, but we got a climate plan.”

“Now we have another grand bargain. Are we going to see more action on climate in this? We’re in a very different climate than we were when Trudeau came in. That remains to be seen. I think that’s going to depend on how well Prime Minister Carney negotiates the details of the plan and Minister Dabrusin’s commitment to following through on climate. I still believe that he is the climate leader he said he was, and that we will get that action.”

Cortes Currents: “Two questions, which you’ve actually answered before, but I want to go back to anyway. That was to go the alternate route. Making laws that would say they have to keep it in the ground actually would lead to a lot of lawsuits.”

Jennifer Lash: “The ‘keep it in the ground’ argument is really interesting. In an ideal world, a country like Canada could just leave its oil and gas in the ground, not burn it, and shift our entire economy over to something different, but the transition just doesn’t happen that fast.”

“Another thing that really gets in the way is that fossil fuels, natural gas, and oil are the jurisdiction of the provincial governments, not the federal government. It’s written in our constitution. That is not something we can change without changing our constitution. So the federal government, which is looked to as the climate leader and which is the signatory to the Paris Agreement, is the only entity that can participate in negotiations at COP. The provinces are subnational; they don’t get to go into the negotiations. It is Canada.”

“So there’s this huge expectation that Canada will deliver on our climate commitments, and yet provinces have a lot of jurisdiction. They have the jurisdiction over oil and gas. The federal government can ensure that we have responsibilities over species at risk, we have responsibilities through the Fisheries Act, and we must consult with First Nations. There are certain things that fall under the federal government’s responsibility, but ultimately, the expansion of oil and gas is provincial jurisdiction.”

“When we bring in policies that are presented as reducing emissions but are perceived as constraining production, the provinces will take us to court. We could win; we could lose. It’s unclear. Some people say we would’ve lost the emissions cap in court because, to meet it, it would have required a production cap, and we would’ve just lost in court.”

“The Prime Minister has basically eliminated the emissions cap. I think the emissions will be met through a good carbon pricing system.”

“The federal government just cannot go into a province and say, ‘You must leave your fossil fuels in the ground.’ But that applies to other things too. When we set a standard for the electricity regulations, the provinces want equivalency agreements, and those take a long time to negotiate because the provinces usually want them to be weaker than what we want them to be.”

“So we put all this expectation on the federal government to deliver on all the emissions reductions, but the provinces have a huge responsibility, and sometimes I feel they get off scot-free. We only judge the federal government on whether they’ve met a target or not. In reality, they could be doing everything possible to get there, but there could be economic issues and conflicts with provincial governments that get in the way. That’s why, from a political perspective, trying to get to some sort of climate competitiveness strategy agreement with Alberta could give us the ability to step forward a bit that we haven’t been able to do in the last little while. By the end of Trudeau’s reign, the fight over climate policy with the provinces was very strong, and it was becoming really problematic, with many court cases.”

“There will be court cases, I can guarantee you. If they push a pipeline through, and if the proposed pipeline goes north and they try to get it through into Hecate Strait or Dixon Entrance or anywhere around there, there will be court cases. There were court cases on TMX, there were court cases on Enbridge Northern Gateway, and there will be more.”

Cortes Currents: I have a related question, there has been considerable skepticism about carbon capture technology and its ability to address oil sands emissions.”

Jennifer Lash: “So again, the federal government cannot tell Premier Smith not to take oil out of the ground. The federal government can regulate emissions because it’s carbon pollution; it’s listed under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act (CEPA).”

“When the federal government says, ‘We can’t stop your production, but you have to reduce your emissions,’ six of the largest oil companies—pretty much the only oil companies in the oil sands—got together and came up with this project called Pathways. They said, ‘Great, we are going to reduce our emissions.’”

“I think they estimated they could achieve a reduction of 22 megatons by a certain year, which I can’t recall. The emissions cap, when it was first developed under Minister Guilbeault, basically said, ‘Okay, that’s what you said you can do. So we’re going to assume you’re going to do that by 2030. That is what we assume you’re going to do because you told us you could do it.’ Now, if they don’t do it, that’s on them, right? This agreement is basically the same thing. It’s like, ‘You’ve said you can achieve 22 megatons.’”

“Industry claimed they could achieve 22 megatons, but we only counted 20 megatons because we thought, ‘Well, they probably won’t reach their goal, so we actually gave them a buffer.’”

“The real frustration with carbon capture and storage is whether Canadians should be paying for it because there are so many people who just don’t believe it’s actually real. They don’t believe that the technology is there. They think that oil companies are exaggerating the impact they can have with technology. They argue that since oil companies are making so much money, they should be the ones paying for it. Why should Canadian taxpayers be footing the bill? I think there’s a good argument there. Unfortunately, the way the world works is that industry doesn’t change, and shareholders don’t agree to start shifting allocations within a company unless there’s support for it.”

“I think the belief from the Carney government is that if we don’t somehow have a tax system—the investment tax credits (ITCs) we put in under Trudeau—if we don’t keep those, then they’re not going to build it. So if we’ve done everything we can to set up financially for them and negotiated this whole deal, and it goes ahead, and Alberta starts to put money into it, then they have a responsibility to live up to their commitment.”

Cortes Currents: “Is there anything you want to add to anything you’ve said?”

Jennifer Lash: “I’m not going to deny the fact that some of the regulations and actions of this government are weakening action on climate. Again, carbon pricing is delayed, the ZEV mandate has been put on hold, and it’s undergoing review. Hopefully, it won’t get changed too much.”

“I think the other thing we’re seeing is a government that talks about climate differently. Under Trudeau, it was discussed in terms of a moral imperative; we have a responsibility globally to reduce our emissions. I think we’re the 10th or 11th greatest source of emissions in the world. Some people like to say we’re only 1% of the emissions, but there are 184 countries that pollute less than us, which means we are a major polluter.

“Prime Minister Trudeau took that seriously, and he felt that moral obligation. All the environment ministers that worked under him—including myself, under Minister Guilbeault—felt that moral obligation. We talked about climate as a responsibility we had both here in Canada and globally. We invested a lot in helping with adaptation and mitigation in other countries through climate financing. We did a lot of work here at home.”

“This government talks about it differently, and I don’t think they talk about it differently because it’s necessarily bad. I think they talk about it differently because we’re in a different time. We are in a time of a global trade war, and we’re trying to reimagine what Canada is. The economy is at the forefront of every conversation I have. You see it in the polls; you see it everywhere.”

“It’s what people are worried about. I have two 25-year-old children, and I’m very worried about their economic future. So what you see from Minister Dabrusin, Prime Minister Carney, and Minister Hodgson at Natural Resources is that they talk about climate as part of the economy. That’s why it’s now called a climate competitiveness strategy.”

“How does taking climate action make us more competitive in the market? That is the approach they’re taking. I just really encourage people to understand that the policies are changing, but the tone is changing too. I think that’s really upsetting people, but I think that is the Prime Minister reading the politics of where we’re at right now. I’m going to give him the benefit of the doubt that we’re still going to get to some good climate policy and get as close to our target as possible, if not meet it.”

Links of Interest:

• Politics Untangled (Jennifer Lash’s political posts)
• Four Local Leaders React to Canada’s MOU with Alberta – Cortes Currents
• MOU with Alberta: The Poll, Pipeline, Tanker Traffic and Global Temperature Rise (Part 2 of 2) – Cortes Currents

Top photo credit: Ready to take notes – Photo by John Beans via Flickr (CC BY 2.0)

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