This past winter, I visited my father’s office at the University of Toronto, where he teaches the science of climate change. On the chalkboard, he has left the drawings I made 24 years ago when I was six: a car trailing exhaust and dollar signs, Mother Earth coughing and wind turbines surrounded by dancing animals and children. They were my first attempts to make sense of a crisis I already felt but couldn’t yet name. 

Today, as climate change-driven wildfires choke cities across Canada, that childhood fear is no longer imagined. It is a daily reality for millions. Yet last June, Prime Minister Mark Carney argued that Canada cannot afford to restrain the growth of oil and gas to “meet a short-term goal” of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Days later, his government announced a publicly owned pipeline to move Alberta oil to the West Coast, at an estimated cost of up to $44 billion.

Federal policy must do three things at once: build an affordable, reliable energy system; strengthen national security; and cut emissions to near-zero by mid-century. The latter requires winding down oil and gas production and transitioning to a fully electric, renewable-powered energy system.

More frequent, intense wildfires are not an........

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