“Canada’s back,” we cried with glee — a progressive leader, finally returned to COP21 in Paris back in 2015. And indeed we were, with dramatically more constructive engagement in international climate negotiations than the previous government. Unabashedly running on a climate-focused agenda, the Trudeau Liberals won the support of Canadians through two more elections in 2019 and 2021. And yet today, under a new leader, we as a country have arrived at COP30 with empty hands, expressly moving backwards on almost every climate policy we’ve put in place since Paris. Is the new phrase, “Canada’s left the building”?

Liberals (and Canadians) may have grown tired of Trudeau and replaced him with the central banker Mark Carney, but underlying both the leadership race and the general election was the assumption that there would not be a gutting of the country’s climate plan. Canadians still care about the climate, with support for policies hovering around 60 to 70 per cent  in recent polling, including recent polling from the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment. And Carney seemed to have a deep enough........

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