For a deal that was widely rumoured for weeks, if not months, last Thursday’s announcement in Calgary of a “grand bargain” between Alberta and Ottawa certainly seemed to catch a lot of people in the climate community by surprise. Steven Guilbeault’s resignation from cabinet later that day only furthered the impression that the terms of Carney’s grand bargain with Alberta, and the extent to which they gave ground on key climate policies, had come as a surprise even to those closest to him. 

If only they’d listened to what he’s been saying for years now. 

On substance, after all, the deal with Alberta aligns with everything Carney stands for on climate. He has made it clear over the course of his career that he prefers markets over regulations as the most effective means of transmitting climate intentions, and that he’s far more interested in policies that attract investment than ones that restrict it. As someone who served as the governor of two different central banks after spending years working on Wall Street, this faith in markets shouldn’t come as a surprise. As he wrote in his 2021 book Value(s), “we simply cannot take the market system, which produces such plenty and so many solutions, for granted.”

It’s not like he hasn’t been sending signals about his enduring belief in capitalism as prime minister, either. It was only last month, in a pre-budget speech delivered to university students in Ottawa, that Carney described his much-ballyhooed Climate Competitiveness Strategy as having “a focus on results over objectives. On investment over prohibition.” That stands in pretty stark contrast to the Trudeau-era policies Carney has largely abandoned, which seemed far more concerned with stating climate objectives........

© National Observer