Unceded Anishinaabe Algonquin Territories [OTTAWA], 4 November 2025:
Today, the Liberal government tabled Budget 2025 in the House of Commons, including a threadbare Climate Competitiveness Strategy. The Budget repackages existing climate and environment commitments with much fanfare, but offers very little new by way of detail. By cutting public service jobs and reducing departmental program delivery, it threatens the government’s ability to take action against climate change.
“Civil society was waiting for Budget 2025 and the Climate Competitiveness Strategy to unveil this government’s grand vision for protecting Canadians from the impacts of climate change in a way that strengthens our sovereignty and resilience,” said Caroline Brouillette, Executive Director of Climate Action Network Canada (CAN-Rac). “We were looking for much-needed clarity on how Ottawa would diversify the economy away from volatile fossil fuels, meet our international climate obligations, and steer Canada towards a safer and more affordable clean energy future.
“We’re still waiting.
“This budget shows that ‘austerity’ applies to efforts to protect people and the planet—but that more money can always be found for military spending and polluting industries. It fails to make any reference to emissions reductions commitments or Canada’s next international climate finance contribution, announces plans to water down anti-greenwashing legislation, takes another step away from the cap on oil and gas emissions, and cuts international assistance.
“The Youth Climate Corps offers a ray of hope, promising meaningful work for young Canadians, and represents a hard-fought win from the youth and climate movements. Overall, though, this budget is not a good look for Prime Minister Carney and Canada going into COP30.”
On the Youth Climate Corps:
Budget 2025 commits $40 million over two years to create a Youth Climate Corps to provide paid skills training for young Canadians, starting in 2026–27. The Budget envisions that these jobs will respond to climate emergencies, support recovery, and strengthen community resilience across the country.
Malaika Collette, Youth Policy Assistant at CAN-Rac, said: “Funding for the Youth Climate Corps is a major breakthrough, which comes at a timely moment and as a direct result of years of coordinated efforts by civil society. We hope this is just the beginning, and that with time, the government will expand the funding and number of jobs. Today the movement celebrates this win; tomorrow, we look forward to working with the government to implement and scale up the program.”
Further analysis:
- CAN-Rac welcomes the federal government’s commitment to strengthening industrial carbon pricing. Improving the application of the benchmark and of the federal backstop when provincial and territorial carbon pricing systems fall short will take a much-needed step towards increasing ambition on industrial carbon price. The federal government must ensure that this leads to increased ambition on carbon pricing rather than a descent to the lowest common denominator that “Team Canada” is able to agree upon.
- Likewise, Budget 2025’s commitment to finalize the landfill methane regulations and the improved oil and gas methane regulations will make important headway into additional emissions reductions.
- The federal government’s recommitment to implementing the Clean Electricity Investment Tax Credit is welcome. Budget 2025 makes broad promises to implement the Clean Electricity Regulations in collaboration with provinces and territories in a way that modernizes the electricity grid to attract new investment, ensures that the grid is clean, and expands interprovincial interties. The federal government must follow through on this commitment by implementing the Clean Electricity Investment Tax Credit through legislation before Parliament rises for their winter break.
- However, Budget 2025 commits no capital to supporting the expansion of an east-west clean electricity grid beyond the Tax Credit. The absence of specific funding fails to provide the kind of financial and regulatory certainty required by provinces, territories, and private investors. This shortfall will result in funding gaps that many provinces are not capable of meeting, and will ultimately cause delays in the construction and operation of the grid.
- Additionally, it is concerning that the government’s definition of “clean” electricity includes reliance on gas, hydrogen, and nuclear, with a lesser focus on renewable energy sources like wind and solar. By focusing on gas-fired power plants, the federal government risks increasing our path dependency on fossil fuels.
- After Prime Minister Carney promised not to cut Official Development Assistance, Budget 2025 commits to reducing international assistance by $2.7 billion over four years. This is a terrible decision that will weaken Canada’s credibility on the world stage and hurt those most vulnerable—failing to recognize the need for the international assistance envelope to grow alongside climate finance to support sustainable development.
Read further reactions and analysis from our colleagues in the labour, development, and migrants’ rights movements.
Quotes:
Keith Brooks, Programs Director, Environmental Defence Canada:
“Budget 2025 and the Climate Competitiveness Strategy was an opportunity for Canada to supercharge the energy transition needed for a strong, future-focused economy, but instead offered little substance and no new measures — all while extending fossil fuel subsidies, backing away from anti-greenwashing rules, and creating a path to axing the long-awaited oil and gas emissions cap.”
Julie McClatchie, Policy and Advocacy, Oxfam Quebec:
“The Climate Competitiveness Strategy in Budget 2025 focuses on markets, not on reducing emissions. At a time of record wildfires and growing inequality, the government is betting on investors instead of public solutions. Canada cannot delay climate action to 2050 when people are already paying the price today.”
Nirvana Mujtaba, Women’s Rights Policy and Advocacy Specialist, Oxfam Canada:
“Canada is burning, and climate disasters are worsening globally, yet Budget 2025’s Climate Competitiveness Strategy treats the climate like an investment opportunity. Delaying net-zero targets by twenty years, scrapping the oil and gas emissions cap, and downplaying fossil fuel emissions shows the government is prioritizing markets at the cost of the planet.”
Keith Stewart, senior energy strategist, Greenpeace Canada:
“This is a guns-not-butter budget with massive new spending on border guards, police and the military, but austerity for programs that care for people and nature. You can’t fight for our future when you are retreating on climate action, including by removing limits on pollution from the oil and gas industry and weakening anti-greenwashing legislation.”
Brendan Haley, Senior Director of Policy Strategy, Efficiency Canada:
“Budget 2025 missed a key opportunity to make energy efficiency a productivity-enhancing nation-building project. Ottawa’s failure to reverse its abrupt shutdown of the Canada Greener Homes Loan or fix issues that favour tax credits over demand-side solutions undermines progress on energy efficiency and affordability goals. While the Climate Competitiveness Strategy and other newly launched initiatives fall short of expectations, Efficiency Canada will continue to advocate for policies that deliver long-term benefits to homeowners, businesses and the environment.”
Gretchen Fitzgerald, Executive Director, Sierra Club Canada:
“The removal of an emissions cap would be a betrayal of those impacted by climate change, such as the wildfire and flood survivors who travelled to Ottawa last year to call for it. Whatever the government’s plans for industrial carbon pricing the emissions cap remains a vital backstop. It’s a mistake to rely on carbon capture and storage for emissions reductions. Straightforward regulations provide clarity and fairness given that individual Canadians are already lowering their emissions while wealthy oil and gas corporations continue to be our biggest polluters.”
Sabaa Khan, Climate Director with the David Suzuki Foundation:
“While the Climate Competitiveness Strategy outlines some important measures to reduce emissions, such as strengthening methane regulations, a commitment to address shortcomings with industrial carbon pricing, and sustainable investment guidelines, the strategy misses the plot. Canada can’t build a resilient and competitive economy by doubling down on fossil fuels. Investments that lock us into fossil fuel dependence, such as Liquefied Natural Gas, Carbon Capture and Storage, and backing away from measures to cut overall emissions from oil and gas will only deepen the costs for future generations. True generational prosperity demands investments in bold climate action and in preparing communities and workers for the worsening impacts of climate change fueled by oil and gas extraction, which already cost us billions every year.”
Atiya Jaffar, Canada Country Manager, 350.org:
“This budget is a betrayal of public trust and a shocking failure to confront the climate emergency. The Carney government’s plan will shred our social safety net and slash hard-fought climate action measures. Carney has failed to materially follow through on his electoral promises for climate and affordability, like building an East-West Grid. Instead, his budget takes us in the opposite direction, cutting climate action programs, including the pollution cap, while propping up Big Oil with subsidies for dangerous distractions like carbon capture and LNG.”
Seth Klein, team lead, Climate Emergency Unit, and Bushra Asghar, YCC campaign lead:
“After many years of campaigning, we are relieved and heartened to see the Youth Climate Corps established in Budget 2025, with a commitment of $40 million over two years. This is a win for hundreds of young activists and allies who have pressed hard for this idea, especially in the context of a budget that is significantly retreating on climate and decreasing overall program spending. But notably, $20 million a year will only produce about 350 full-time jobs for the whole country, which is not terribly consequential for tackling the skyrocketing youth unemployment or addressing the climate crisis. Today’s announcement is a far cry from the $1 billion annual investment our campaign has called for, but it gets our foot in the door to prove the YCC’s worth. So we will roll up our sleeves and work with the government to up the ambition for a Youth Climate Corps that matches the generational challenge.”
Andrew Gage, Staff Lawyer, West Coast Environmental Law:
“The federal government is exposing itself to legal risk by not taking stronger climate action. The International Court of Justice has confirmed that states like Canada are legally obliged to reduce their emissions consistent with a climate-stable world, and Canadian courts have recognized the existential threat the climate crisis poses. Youth in Canada are already challenging the federal government in court over inadequate climate action that they argue violates their Charter rights. The federal government could spare itself costly litigation by upholding its climate obligations.”
Tamara Lorincz, Senior Researcher, Canadian Voice of Women for Peace:
“Budget 2025 is a plan for war not to prepare Canadians for global warming. It will dramatically boost spending for the Department of National Defence, the largest consumer of fossil fuel in the federal government, while underfunding programs for the climate, the environment, and women. An additional $81 billion over five years is to rebuild, re-arm and reinvest in the Canadian Armed Forces, a male-dominated institution. The defence budget will increase to 2% of GDP this year and 5% of GDP by 2035 to meet the NATO targets. By 2035, military spending will rise to $150 billion/year for a “strong fighting force” diverting public funding away from the climate crisis, which is the greatest security threat facing Canadians.”
Ann McAllister, Chair, Coalition for Responsible Energy Development in New Brunswick (CRED-NB):
“With $115 billion over 5 years committed to infrastructure that includes “clean and conventional” energy, CRED-NB stands ready to protect New Brunswickers from more fossil fuel and nuclear builds that will only worsen climate change and burden future generations with the forever liability of radioactive waste.”
Dr. Melissa Lem, president of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment (CAPE):
“By directing public funds towards fossil fuel projects without fully accounting for their health and climate impacts, the government is putting the wellbeing of people in Canada at risk. Ignoring these risks means disregarding both the science and the human consequences, including worsening respiratory illness, heat-related deaths, and land, water and air contamination. We are also deeply concerned that the proposed oil and gas emissions cap is slated for elimination and that toxic pollutant management received no attention in this budget. We must reiterate what we outlined with the Green Budget Coalition last week: investing in a clean electricity grid, climate-resilient housing, nature protection, and protection from toxic chemicals isn’t just good environmental policy; it’s good health policy. Every dollar we invest in preventing pollution and climate damage today pays dividends in healthier families and lower health-care costs tomorrow.”
Liz McDowell, Stand.earth Senior Campaigns Director:
“For the Carney government, a truly generational budget should mean prioritizing building the clean energy economy of the future, not more subsidies for big corporations and heavy polluters. We’ll all benefit from investments in millions of green homes and a thriving EV manufacturing industry, and projects like a clean east-west grid, solar and wind energy, and high speed rail. Projects like these, if done right, will help Canada become truly climate competitive while making day-to-day life better for millions of people. I am disappointed to see today’s budget touting more handouts to the massively profitable oil and gas sector rather than outlining a credible plan to rein in the industry’s pollution.”
Cathy Orlando, National Director Citizens’ Climate Lobby Canada:
“Happily, Canada has the lowest debt‑to‑GDP ratio in the G7 and a triple‑A credit rating from Moody’s. We’re relieved that the industrial carbon price and methane regulations remain in place, even amid climate disinformation and an affordability crisis driven by the climate emergency and oil companies artificially inflating prices. Unfortunately, Conservatives continue to falsely blame rising food costs on the industrial carbon price.”
Michelle Xie, West Coast & Prairies Campus Organizing Lead, Change Course:
“The 2025 federal budget showcases the government’s misplaced priorities with their plan to pour billions of taxpayer money into bolstering the extractive industry and carceral state. As a young person whose generation is already living through the ravages of polycrisis — including the threats of expanding liquified natural gas infrastructure across so-called B.C. — we reject this costly, short-sighted, and harmful attempt at nation-building. Now is the time to be investing in universal basic services and transformative, justice-centred climate solutions to build the regenerative economies everyday people deserve.”
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Canada’s farthest-reaching network of organizations working on climate and energy issues, Climate Action Network – Réseau action climat (CAN-Rac) Canada is a coalition of close to 200 organizations operating from coast to coast to coast. Our membership brings environmental groups together with trade unions, First Nations, social justice, development, health and youth organizations, faith groups and local, grassroots initiatives.