Mark Carney Claims Fossil Fuels Are Good for the Economy: This is Shock Doctrine Level Gaslighting

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This is the piece I never wanted to write, but alas here we are. Prime Minister Mark Carney has abandoned Canada’s goals for reducing emissions and addressing climate change. These are goals the Canadian government agreed to under the Paris Climate Agreement. It is now clear that Canada will not meet its 2030 climate goals. Carney has also announced approval for another oil pipeline project, with Canadians paying ninety percent of the initial costs through the Trans Mountain Corporation and the Alberta Petroleum Marketing Commission. The sole private sector proponent, Pembina Pipeline, will be responsible for ten percent of the costs, with an option to buy another ten percent after the pipeline is operational and making money. The Prime Minister also announced that British Columbia and the federal government would work together to increase Canada’s natural gas capacity.

“Prime Minister Mark Carney has abandoned all of Canada’s goals for reducing emissions and addressing climate change.”

These are very risky plans, given that growth in oil demand slowed in 2025 and growth in natural gas demand “slowed markedly.”  The International Energy Agency has told us in their World Energy Outlook 2025 that if all stated energy and climate policies are implemented, the world could reach peak oil by 2030. This pipeline will not be completed until 2032 to 2034, potentially two to four years after peak oil. Even if peak oil occurs after 2030, we’re clearly in a very volatile period for oil that will only get more volatile as investment continues to move towards renewable energy.

Prime Minister Carney claims that this destruction of Canada’s short term emissions reduction goals is necessary to address the hostilities visited on Canada and the world by the United States, under the Trump administration. This has become a familiar refrain, as the prime minister continues to engage in public policy that shifts to the right of Stephen Harper, particularly on the environment. Notably, this pipeline is also predicted to be completed four to six years after the next American presidential election in 2028, assuming it the pipeline is completed on time at all. The solution does not fit the problem.

If Canadians cannot afford to reduce emissions, as Carney says, then we certainly cannot afford an oil pipeline. Clearly, there are motivations at work here that Canadians are not being told about. Perhaps the amount of time that natural resource companies have spent lobbying the prime minister, while environmental groups cannot get a meeting, provides a clue to Carney’s true motivations.

“If Canadians cannot afford to reduce emissions, as Carney says, then we certainly cannot afford an oil pipeline.”

It has been suggested by some commentators that Carney is “flooding the zone.” This is a political strategy commonly associated with the Trump administration. It involves disorienting the public by putting so many far-right policy changes into the public environment at once that activists and citizens who oppose the policies do not know which issues to pay attention to first. The leader of the federal New Democratic Party, Avi Lewis, has suggested that this is a “shock doctrine” approach to getting things done. Naomi Klein introduced the concept of “disaster capitalism” in her book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (2008). When covering disasters as a journalist, Klein noticed how governments and the private sector would take a rapid-fire approach to sweeping in with corporate makeovers of public policy and social programs, as people were still reeling from the shock of catastrophes. Neoliberal leaders around the world, including those in the United States, have used this strategy. Increasingly, it seems to be coming home to Canada under Carney.

Under this prime minister’s reign, the government has used the Trump emergency to justify centralizing power in the federal cabinet through the Building Canada Act. The same act gives the cabinet the power to override environmental legislation and Indigenous consultation. The emergency response reasoning has also been used to justify cuts of 16,000 full time public service jobs in the Canada Strong Budget 2025. It has been used to justify the Strong Borders Act, which the Canadian Civil Liberties Association says will have serious implications for the surveillance powers of the federal government and privacy of Canadians. Notice the nationalist language at play here: Building Canada Act, Canada Strong Budget, and Strong Borders Act. Following the “elbows up” sentiments of Carney’s election campaign, it is easy to see how he clothes himself in the language of nationalism, while working in the interest of transnational oil companies.

Democrats Abroad organized an anti-Trump protest near the American Consulate in Toronto on April 5, 2025. It was part of the "Hands Off" rallies held across USA, Europe and Canada.
“Elbows Up” by Can Pac Swire is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

Carney chose to break the news that he was walking away from the emissions reductions policies of the Trudeau era in a video released on the eve of Canada Day. Of course, his move away from addressing climate change had been obvious to those of us in the field of Environmental Studies for some time. Presumably, he chose the eve of Canada Day as a time when voters are not really paying attention to the news, and a video format to avoid a news conference in which reporters would be able to ask questions of him.

The Prime Minister started out with his usual plea of needing to do extreme things because of the emergency that Canada is in with the United States. He stated: “The climate plan we inherited from the previous government was well intentioned and well suited for the times in which it was designed. Our neighbourhood hasn’t been this hostile since when Canada was founded. The world hasn’t been this unstable geopolitically since the end of the Second World War. We must establish stability amongst this chaos.”

Given that this is a site for academic historians, I will not delve deeply into how ahistorical or contradictory those claims are. We are all aware that Canada is a white settler nation, forged in conflict both against Indigenous populations, and between two empires. These hostilities continued through the Red River Rebellion, residential schools, the Sixties Scoop, the October Crisis, and separatist votes in Quebec. There has been labour unrest such as the Winnipeg General Strike of 1919. Canadian people suffered greatly during the Great Depression because of our dependence on the export of natural resources. So much so that it is strange that Carney’s nation building projects would be so focused on natural resource extraction, as the global economy has become so much more service based.  

The prime minister claims that the country must pull back on our emission reduction goals because we cannot afford to do otherwise: “We can’t afford to restrain the growth of an important part of our energy mix, oil and gas, to meet a short-term goal.” However, a report published by the Canadian Climate Institute entitled Damage Control: Reducing the Costs of Climate Control in Canada (2022) found that failure to address climate change has cost Canada $25 billion in growth. The Trans Mountain pipeline went well over budget (from $5.3 billion to $34.2 billion), and while it is painted as a revenue generator for the country, it is buried in debt and interest costs. Can we really afford to continue developing oil?

The prime minister further stated: “The changes we have made will mean that our emissions will be higher in the next few years than they were projected to be under the previous government’s plan. But in my judgement, that plan was not sustainable over the long term. It would have been too expensive for Canadians, who are already struggling with affordability.” So, we tax voters to build another pipeline instead of giving them carbon rebates that put money in the hands of most Canadians?

Carney claims that the Trudeau era climate plan: “…would have been too divisive for our country. In the current environment the old plan was an open opportunity for those people who wish to pull Canada apart, both at home and from abroad.”

Mark Carney in Calgary after Canada–Alberta energy agreement, May 15 2026
Prime Minister Mark Carney at a media availability in Calgary, Alberta, on May 15, 2026, at Local 496 of the United Association of Journeymen and Apprentices of the Plumbing and Pipefitting Industry of the United States and Canada. “Mark Carney in Calgary after Canada–Alberta energy agreement, May 15 2026” by Jasonhargrove is licensed under CC BY 4.0.

To keep the country together, Canadian taxpayers have already paid for one pipeline that did not satisfy Alberta. Nor has it prevented the Alberta separatist movement from picking up speed, as Facebook has paid overseas content providers who are trying to drive the movement. A report from on Canada’s digital environment has also found that the Alberta separatist movement is driven by Russian networks and United States influencers. The researchers have called this interference with our “cognitive sovereignty.”

If Carney really was concerned about the country being broken up, would he not be focused on election and referendum security, and cybersecurity? Would he not be taking steps to protect our cognitive sovereignty? He has not even mentioned such things as he massively increased Canada’s defence spending. Are election and cyber insecurity not the biggest threats to our democracy in the current global environment?

“What we can do as scholars to stop him before his anti-environment agenda goes any further?”

These are very concerning directions for our country to go in from an environmental perspective but also from a social, economic, and political perspective. The political control ceded to external actors gives them the power they need to engage in the environmental destruction they want to, whether that be pipelines, mega dams, mining projects, or data centres. The oligarchs are in control now and our prime minister is one of them. Carney is taking us back to the era before Silent Spring (1962) and the birth of the contemporary environmental movement. We should also seriously ask ourselves if the prime minister is creating the kind of country we want to live in, for ourselves and the next generation, and what we can do as scholars to stop him before his anti-environment agenda goes any further.

Feature Image: “Turning the Paris Climate Agreement into Action” by World Bank Photo Collection is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.
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Lori Lee Oates

Teaching Assistant Professor at Memorial University of Newfoundland
Lori Lee Oates is a Teaching Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at Memorial University of Newfoundland. Currently, she holds a SSHRC Insight Development Grant for a project entitled Cursed: How the Resource Curse Manifests in Newfoundland and Labrador. Lori Lee recently co-edited a special section of Atlantis: Critical Studies in Gender, Social Justice & Culture on Gender and Climate Justice. She is also a member of the Environmental Cluster of the Canadian Sociological Association. Lori Lee has been a contributor to the CBC, The Globe and Mail, Canada's National Observer, and The Hill Times. She has advised national environmental groups on the political economy of climate change and a just transition off fossil fuels.

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