I just signed a letter to Prime Minister Carney being circulated by 350.org/canada/no-pipel…. But I personalized it to reflect my own thinking and thought I’d share it in case anyone is motivated to send their own letter.

Dear Prime Minister Carney,

I voted for you enthusiastically in 2025 in large part because you understood that the science is clear that burning fossil fuels is cooking our planet. You said yourself over a decade ago that the “vast majority of reserves are unburnable”.

Since then, the climate crisis has gotten exponentially worse. Destructive fires, deadly heat waves, and devastating floods are regularly impacting communities across the country and around the world, costing billions of dollars and endangering millions of lives.

Your recent MOU with Alberta appears to pave the way for more dirty extraction and toxic pipelines, expanding dangerous tanker traffic, and more carbon emissions that will continue to warm the climate and endanger us all. Your Major Projects Office seems to prioritize corporate profit above the health of our communities, the future of our planet, and the rights of Indigenous peoples. On top of all of this, your government is gutting key federal climate legislation, rendering our emission reduction targets unattainable and putting a livable future further out of reach.

This is unacceptable.

That’s why we’re calling on you to:

1. Immediately impose the previously-promised emissions cap on fossil fuel extraction in Canada and launch a plan to completely phase out the fossil fuel industry in line with science. That means no new pipelines that would endanger communities and ecosystems, and vastly expand one of the dirtiest sources of fossil fuels on earth: the Alberta tar sands.

2. Transition Canada to a 100% renewable energy economy. That includes funding a publicly owned East West Grid to power communities with affordable, reliable, renewable energy while uplifting Indigenous leadership and creating tens of thousands of good, green jobs.

The decisions you make this year will fundamentally shape the future of the country and the planet. Canada cannot afford to continue down a trajectory of fossil fueled climate chaos.

I don’t understand your actions and only hope your thinking is that the conditions you’ve set for approval of new pipelines are so onerous as to ensure they won’t actually get built. However what about oil sands expansion? I could see allowing expansion if CCS is actually implemented and effective in keeping the industry within the Sectoral Cap. And only if it is 100% privately funded from the revenues it generates including the cost of the CCS systems and the industrial carbon price. If that is possible, go ahead. That way you can’t be blamed by Albertans for saying “no”, yet expansion would be highly unlikely to proceed.

But why have you removed the Oil Sands Emissions Cap? How can Canada possibly meet our emission targets if oil sands emissions are allowed to continue growing? Your actions may suffice to assuage Alberta, but are too subtle for ordinary Canadians to understand and are damaging your credibility as a carbon champion.

I hope you will be clearer about your strategy and outline a credible plan to build the economy while achieving our GHG emission reduction targets. A clean, smart, distributed national electric grid is key and should be the focus of your attention and actions.

With urgency,

Jordan Grant