Towards the end of every day on the periphery of the UN climate talks, civil society groups gather in a satirical ceremony to present an award to those “doing the most to achieve the least.” The Fossil of the Day award is a raucous ritual, observed each day of climate negotiations since 1999. Canada was given the ignoble honour this week in Brazil, for the first time since the Harper years.

Canada is “completely ‘Missing in Action’” in the international deliberations and is rolling back its progress at home, pronounced the award committee, drawn from the members of Climate Action Network (CAN), an association of over 1,800 organizations spread across every inhabited continent. 

“In addition to the backsliding on policies tackling Canada’s climate-destroying pollution … Environment Minister Julie Dabrusin has chosen inaction and silence where leadership was urgently needed,” said CAN. 

Many of the accusations will be familiar to anyone following Canadian politics: pulling back climate policies while pushing forward fossil subsidies and projects. But the committee seemed particularly stung by Mark Carney’s role in flushing “climate policies down the drain” after so many years lauding him for raising the alarm about climate risk.

At the outset of COP30, Canadians were frequently met with envy by people familiar with Carney’s background but unfamiliar with the last few months of domestic politics. The perception has soured as news about fossil fuel subsidies, an LNG project, a gas pipeline and even reports about a new bitumen pipeline all landed during the climate negotiations.

The sense of betrayal led to some unusually sharp jabs by the award committee, and even a hurtful dig at our duds: “Canada has been wearing hypocrisy as confidently and comfortably as it wears its national denim-on-denim look, masking fossil expansion behind the language of climate leadership.”

Caroline Brouillette, executive director of the Canadian arm of CAN, says we should overlook the gratuitous trashing of the........

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