As a leader in finance, Mark Carney said climate action was critical. Where is that urgency now?

Most Canadians know that Prime Minister Mark Carney entered politics with heavy-hitting experience as an economist and central banker.

But perhaps less known is Carney’s pre-political role in the fight for climate action.

“The challenges currently posed by climate change pale in significance compared with what might come,” Carney said in a landmark speech at insurance company Lloyd's of London in 2015, while head of the Bank of England. “While there is still time to act, the window of opportunity is finite and shrinking.”

For years, Carney used his economic credibility to draw global attention to the mounting financial costs of global warming and the opportunities of the energy transition.

The 2015 speech "was one of the first times when a serious economist discussed climate change as a real risk,” Julie Segal, senior manager of climate finance at advocacy group Environmental Defence, told CBC News.

But in that address, Carney also emphasized his lane: “It is not for a central banker to advocate for one policy response over another. That is for governments to decide.”

Ten years later, as prime minister, Carney has dismantled Canada’s consumer carbon pricing mechanism, frozen its EV mandates and the emissions cap — the first in the G7, set to take effect in 2030 — may be axed any day.

He has also backed a major expansion of LNG exports and controversial carbon capture technology, and opened the door to new pipeline discussions with Alberta Premier Danielle Smith and U.S. President Donald Trump.

The Prime Minister's Office has yet to confirm if Carney will attend COP30 — the annual UN climate negotiations — in Brazil early next month.

“What happened to you?” Bloomberg reporter Mishal Husain recently asked Carney in an interview for her podcast, referring specifically to climate action.

“I’m the same me. I’m focused on the same issues,” he said.

In waiting for the climate competitiveness strategy the government has promised to deliver in next month’s budget, some are becoming wary of Carney's priorities.

“As an individual who's built a successful reputation on being savvy on climate change, and business and economics, the current approach of avoiding climate mitigation doesn't add up,” Segal said.

Climate finance pioneer

After his terms as the head of the Bank of Canada and then the Bank of England, Carney took on a climate-specific role in the UN in 2019, as well as a position leading 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 awakening him to the financial threat of climate change.

WATCH | Carney in 2021 on the urgency of climate action:

'We can't self isolate from climate change:' Carney

March 14, 2021 |

Duration1:03

In an interview with CBC News' Chief 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 issue for a long time. I felt that on the margin I was helping out in recycling and conservation and other aspects,” Carney reflected in 2021. “But candidly, I assumed that climate was being taken care of, that 'they' were taking care of it. And then at some point I realized I was part of 'they,' and it wasn’t being taken care of.”

In 2021, he published the book Value(s), which argued for an economy grounded in fairness and sustainability. He also continued to leverage his credibility to build private-sector engagement on climate action.

As part of the effort to mobilize the financial sector, Carney stepped into yet 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 striving for a net zero financial system.

At the time of its launch, Carney called GFANZ “the breakthrough in mainstreaming climate finance the world needs … [it] will act as the strategic forum to ensure the financial system works together to broaden, deepen and accelerate the transition to a net zero economy.”

In part due to a changing political landscape, GFANZ has since fallen apart, with the collapse of its banking alliance subgroup this month widely considered the death knell for Carney’s initiative.

Waiting on values

As prime minister, Carney has promised Canadians his government has a climate plan.

At the Liberal caucus meetings in Edmonton in September, Carney said the government "recognizes that addressing climate change isn’t just a moral duty…. it’s also an economic imperative for the competitiveness of our businesses and the workers they employ.”

He reiterated that promise in a nation-building speech at the University of Ottawa on Tuesday, saying a climate strategy would be revealed when his government tables its budget on Nov. 4.

Yet skepticism remains. At those September caucus meetings, a group of Liberal MPs formed an environmental caucus to ensure climate change wasn’t being pushed off the political agenda. While maintaining faith in Carney's leadership, a couple members expressed concern to CBC News about his 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," one Liberal MP said, on the condition they wouldn't be named. "What's going on?"

Chris Severson-Baker, executive director of the Pembina Institute, said he isn’t surprised at Carney’s approach so far.

“Groups like ours are eagerly awaiting decisions, some of which may be reflected in the budget that's about to come out,” he said.

An important one, Severson-Baker said, will be Carney's commitment to strengthening the industrial carbon pricing regime, which charges large emitters — like the cement and oil industries — for exceeding emissions limits.

“It is fundamental to how Canada is tackling climate change. It is sort of the mechanism that does most of the heavy lifting, if you like, in terms of reducing emissions," Severson-Baker said. "But it's also badly in 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 weakening policy.

Segal said the Canadian government’s lack of detail and transparency on its climate plan concerns her.

“The current government is being non-committal about plans for interim climate targets,” she said. “Certainly we can be pragmatic about changing policies, yet those have to legitimately and mathematically lead to reducing emissions to zero by 2050. That hasn't been demonstrated.”

Severson-Baker said he still has faith the government understands its responsibility to create strong climate policy.

“Nothing that I've seen so far … suggests that they think that the role for addressing climate change rests with 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 bit of time to sort of think through exactly how to achieve 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 around them many times. When constituents ask questions, it is very powerful.”

He cautioned: “Don’t assume that your politician cares about this issue as much as you do. But they will, the more you and others raise it with them.”

• Almost one million Canadians have serious climate anxiety, study suggests

Environmental advocates and even people within Carney's own party have raised concerns about his seriousness on climate.

The question is whether he believes Canadians want him to treat it with the same urgency he did a decade ago.

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