The following is a re-print of the June 2026 edition of Shift Storm, the CCPA’s monthly newsletter which focuses on the intersection of work and climate change. Click here to subscribe to Shift Storm and get the latest updates straight to your inbox as soon as they come out.
“Red tape” is the bogeyman of neoliberal economics, and cutting that red tape is a perennial call-to-arms for conservative politicians.
Over the past year, the federal government has attempted to get rid of pesky rules that “cause delays for major projects or economic growth,” leveraging such vehicles as the Major Projects Office and aptly-named Red Tape Reduction Office to accelerate deregulation. Reducing Canada’s regulatory “burden” will, allegedly, facilitate increased foreign investment and improve competitiveness for the Canadian economy by allowing private industry to flourish.
Putting aside the fact that “red tape” often exists for very good reasons—I, for one, would prefer that the federal government not be able to ignore environmental and human rights laws whenever it pleases—the appeal to competitiveness is equally suspect, and no more so than in the context of energy.
The federal government has lately taken to calling Canada an “energy superpower,” a phrase that was first popularized by Stephen Harper back in 2006. For the federal government then, as now, being an energy superpower means resting on the laurels of Canada’s existing clean energy infrastructure—most of which was built in the 1960s through 1990s—while aggressively promoting new public and private investment in the fossil fuel industry. For Harper, it was the oil sands. For Carney, it’s gas (and also the oil sands).
Crucially, this is not an economic vision that can be realized simply by cutting red tape. The Harper/Carney energy agenda requires the liberal application of what we might call black tape—the state subsidies, regulations and market facilitation that hold the fossil fuel industry together.
We see this at every stage of the supply chain today. On the upstream side, for example, the federal government is burning tremendous political capital to facilitate new oil and gas transportation infrastructure. On the downstream side, for example, the Privy Council recently admitted that one of the main arguments for accelerating Canada’s data centre build-out is that it creates a new market for Canadian gas producers.
These are not appeals to market forces. Indeed, if Canada’s energy sector was truly governed by market forces, we would be joining the rest of the world in going all in on solar, wind and batteries, which are cheaper, cleaner, faster to deploy and increasingly more reliable (as we will see below). Instead, we are artificially propping up industries, such as oil sands extraction, liquefied natural gas processing and nuclear power that would not otherwise be economically competitive. For example, expanding the nuclear sector in Ontario, as the federal government endorsed in its new nuclear strategy, could have a public price tag of $300 billion—three times the cost of producing the same amount of power using renewables.
Modern economies may be held together with tape, but it’s not all red tape. In Canada’s case, there is just as much black tape propping up whole sections of the economy.
And if our scissor fingers are itching to start cutting tape, that’s probably where we should start.
Storm surge: this month’s key reads
Battery breakthroughs are changing everything about the energy transition
Solar and wind are intermittent power sources. The sun doesn’t always shine and the wind doesn’t always blow, as fossil fuel backers like to remind us. And, for a long time, intermittency has been one of the key arguments against the adoption of solar and wind even where they are the cheapest sources of new power generation on paper.
There are two solutions to intermittency: stable baseload power (typically from hydro, nuclear or gas plants) and long-range power transmission. The wind may not always be blowing here, for example, but it is always blowing somewhere, so the bigger the grid the more you can moderate the effects of intermittency.
However, all of that is changing with the revolution in battery storage. You may already be aware that the cost of solar has fallen by 87 per cent since 2010 and the cost of wind has fallen by 55 per cent, but as a new report from the International Renewable Energy Agency, 24/7 renewables, highlights, the cost of batteries has also fallen by 93 per cent in the same period. Pairing solar and/or wind with on-site batteries at scale now can now provide “firm” (i.e. round-the-clock) power that is as reliable as a coal or gas plant for a fraction of the cost. A 100% clean grid is now the cheapest way to deliver reliable power around the globe, as Australia is already demonstrating.
In a new report, Power Play, the Canadian Climate Institute argues that Canada is in an especially good position to double down on solar and wind. Because we have so much hydro power delivering baseload, we can reap the benefits of cheap renewables while only requiring batteries to plug the gaps. Add in more long-range transmission and Canada can drive down costs even further while expanding generation—no nuclear or gas required.
Investing in renewable electricity is about as close as we get to a no-brainer in public policy. I agree with CCI’s recommendations to strengthen the Clean Electricity Regulations and back grid expansions with public money. The faster we expand clean power generation, the faster we can electrify (and decarbonize) the rest of the economy.
Research radar: the latest developments in work and climate
As Europe swelters, scientists prepare for worse. Temperatures in excess of 40 degrees Celsius are cooking France, the UK and other parts of Europe right now, which has already led to dozens of deaths. Things are likely to get worse, including in Canada, once El Niño fully takes hold in the coming months. The last El Niño in 2023-2024 led to the hottest year in recorded history. 2026 is likely to be worse.
Can the law save Canadian climate policy? A group of ENGOs and youth activists is suing the federal government for backsliding on climate policy, which is a violation of the government’s legislated commitments under the Net-Zero Act. Last year, I (reluctantly) called the legal system the last bastion of climate action, and we’ll see if that proves to be the case here. I’ll be following developments closely.
Canada-Alberta MOU will not, in fact, reduce emissions. It probably goes without saying, but, according to a new analysis from the Canadian Climate Institute, the pipeline-for-carbon pricing agreement negotiated between the federal and Alberta governments is unlikely to reduce overall greenhouse gas emissions compared to the previous policy trajectory. The good news, I suppose, is that the trajectory is not substantially worse than it was before, either. The bottom line is that this deal does not help climate action and, by locking in new fossil fuel infrastructure, will make it harder and more costly to transition later on.
The green buildings sector employs ten times as many workers as oil and gas. In Building Prosperity, the Canada Green Building Council quantifies the economic benefits of green construction, which refers to both retrofits and new builds with explicit energy efficiency and environmental goals. They peg the sector at half a million direct jobs, which is ten times more than direct jobs in oil and gas extraction. I’d argue it’s probably more like five times, but, even still, it’s an important reminder that the clean economy is already a larger employer than the fossil fuel industry and the gap is only widening. A new study from UK-based CBI Economics, The Race for Net Zero, similarly concludes that net-zero-aligned sectors employ more people at higher wages and with greater productivity than other sectors.
Alberta coal workers were left behind even as coal companies received big subsidies. The managed phase-out of coal-fired electricity generation is Canada’s greatest climate policy achievement. It was also a test run of the idea of a just transition for coal workers displaced by climate policies. How did it fare? In Workers Perspectives on Alberta’s Coal Workers Transition Program, the Labour Education Centre finds that the $40 million made available for workers was both insufficient and unjust in the context of a $1.1 billion support program for coal companies. The paper offers a variety of important recommendations, including more holistic transition programs co-developed with workers and their unions. Ian Hussey and I reached a similar conclusion in our 2019 analysis of the program.
Canadians are confused and complacent when it comes to climate change. Re.Climate’s 2026 update to their What Do Canadians Really Think About Climate Change? report finds that climate concern remains high but that climate action continues to fall as a public priority in this country. I’m especially worried about declining scientific literacy. For the first time since this report began, fewer than half of Canadians can correctly identify that climate change is primarily caused by human activities. We have a lot of work to do as climate communicators, but we’re also up against a disinformation machine with ludicrously deep pockets.
Climate change is driving up home insurance rates. A new report from Environmental Defence, Mounting Costs, finds that home insurance rates are rising by 12 per cent per year and that half the increase—equal to about $500 per year for the typical household—can be attributed to climate impacts.
Fossil fuel financing is concentrating among the biggest banks. The 2026 edition of the Banking on Climate Chaos report reaches the interesting conclusion that global fossil fuel finance continues to increase even as many banks are scaling back their support for the fossil fuel industry. What that means is that the biggest, dirtiest banks are taking on a greater share of coal, oil and gas financing. All five of Canada’s big banks remain among the top 25 fossil fuel financiers globally, with RBC leading the charge.
Dark clouds: artificial intelligence on the horizon
Federal AI strategy wants Canadians to stop worrying and learn to love AI. The federal government released its long-delayed artificial intelligence strategy, AI for All, this month. It decries low levels of AI adoption in Canada, which the government blames on “low literacy and low trust.” Rachel Pettigrew and I had a lot to say about the government’s fevered commitment to AI adoption in spite of widespread concerns surrounding AI, so go check out our full analysis over on the CCPA blog. I also joined Paris Marx on the Tech Won’t Save Us podcast to break down the strategy in depth.
UK provides a better model for grappling with AI uncertainty. The Government of the UK released AI Scenarios 2030, which is a brilliant bit of forecasting and a model other governments should emulate. The report describes five distinct possibilities for AI impacts over the coming years, ranging from the air going out of the AI balloon (slow burn scenario) to radical social transformation (take-off scenario). The key takeaway here is that governments have an obligation to prepare for each of these scenarios, rather than banking on the best case scenario alone—which has been Canada’s approach to date.
One of the biggest risks of AI is one of the least discussed. To my chagrin, the federal AI strategy does not once acknowledge the risks to cognition and mental health associated with AI use. Yet, as a new article in the journal Nature explains, a growing body of evidence is finding precisely that AI is causing problematic deskilling in medicine, computer science and other fields. A separate study published this month by researchers at Stockholm University and the University of Hong Kong finds that AI use in secondary schools leads to faster homework completion times but a staggering 20 per cent drop in student exam scores. In my view, this is one of the most underappreciated long-term risks of the AI era, with widespread consequences that will be difficult to identify before it’s too late.
AI experts see catastrophic risks everywhere. The MIT AI Risk Initiative published a study, Prioritization of Risks from Artificial Intelligence, based on interviews with 272 international experts. It’s a rich and interesting attempt to quantify the many different risks associated with AI. The experts view AI misalignment (i.e., evil robots) and AI warfare (i.e. killer robots) as having the greatest potential downsides, but the report identifies potentially catastrophic risks in dozens of different domains, including power centralization, disinformation and environmental harm.
Generative AI systems are a human rights minefield. A new report from Amnesty International, Unlawful by design, documents the myriad human rights concerns associated with generative artificial intelligence, including privacy, discrimination and environmental impacts. The paper concludes with a long list of thoughtful recommendations, but it basically boils down to “regulate the damn thing.” It should be obvious, yet governments around the world are failing to do so.
