The following is a re-print of the April 2025 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.
Extreme weather events caused $8.5 billion in damages in Canada in 2024—the most expensive year for insurable losses in Canadian history.
When indirect climate impacts are considered, such as lost productivity due to extreme heat and supply chain disruptions, the total costs of climate change to the Canadian economy were likely greater than $20 billion last year.
That’s a lot of money—enough to pay for many of the federal parties’ big-ticket election promises—but it ultimately amounts to less than one per cent of Canada’s GDP. At present, the costs of climate change are small enough to be absorbed by the economy and diffuse enough that they can be—and are being—generally ignored by politicians.
Here’s the problem. That $20 billion figure is the canary in the coal mine for the future of the Canadian economy. Based on current trends, we are on track for $100 billion per year in damages by 2050 and up to $1 trillion in damages per year by 2100. Cumulative losses between now and the end of the century amount to $8 trillion in a business-as-usual scenario—a potential loss of a third of GDP over that period.
To be clear, our economy can’t absorb $8 trillion in losses. Global insurers are already warning that “capitalism as we know it ceases to be viable” within a century if we can’t get the climate crisis under control. Canada is no exception.
The good news is that aggressive climate action can help us avoid most (though not all) of those impacts. Every dollar spent on emissions reductions and climate adaptation today avoids more than 10 dollars in future costs.
The bad news is that the calculus of climate action and inaction has not found its way into this federal election campaign. No party has itemized the potential greenhouse gas emissions associated with their policy proposals. Consequently, no party is being transparent about the true costs of their plans.
It doesn’t have to be this way. In advance of the 2021 election, both the Liberals and Conservatives submitted their climate plans for analysis by independent modelers. Those analyses exposed the (in)efficacy of their climate promises as well as the economic costs and benefits over the long-term.
In 2025, although there are obvious differences between the parties in terms of climate policy, we can only make guesses as to the magnitude of their impacts. The Liberals would mostly hold the line on their current approach, which has slowly pushed emissions down over the past 10 years. But how does that compare to the NDP promise to double transit ridership or the Green promise to phase out fossil fuel production by 2045, for example?
For their part, the Conservatives have promised to repeal nearly every single piece of climate policy enacted in the past 10 years while expanding new oil and gas infrastructure. It would almost certainly increase emissions—and, therefore, the costs of climate change—but by how much?
Understanding those magnitudes is an increasingly central question for economic analysis. Researchers at Simon Fraser University and the University of Victoria have offered an initial assessment of the Liberal and Conservative platforms on the emissions front, finding that the Conservative plan would lead to an additional 771 megatonnes of CO2e by 2035 relative to the Liberal plan. It’s excellent and helpful work, but it simplifies the specific policies in question (having been completed before the full platforms were released) and leaves out the other parties.
To help voters make informed decisions, the parties themselves should be making this kind of information readily available in the appendices of their platforms—right alongside nominal GDP and federal debt levels.
We need to be clear-eyed about the implicit costs of policies that fail to address climate change. The trillions of dollars in damages looming over the economy cannot be ignored forever. And while the social cost of carbon is an important tool on this front, without a standardized system for applying it to public policy we are setting ourselves up for disastrous long-term policy decisions.
For many of us in the climate space, it has been a dispiriting election campaign. Nevertheless, it is a vital moment for our democracy. More than seven million Canadians have already voted. If you haven’t yet, please make a plan to vote on Monday.
Storm surge: this month’s key reads
Green buildings are a win-win-win opportunity for climate, affordability and workers
Residential and commercial buildings account for almost a fifth of Canada’s total greenhouse gas emissions, so there is a clear need to improve the efficiency of the existing building stock and ensure new buildings are constructed to the highest standards. As several new pieces of research highlight, decarbonizing the buildings sector is not only good for the climate, but also for workers, households and the Canadian economy.
In its 2025 National Progress Report on Retrofitting Canada’s Homes, Green Communities Canada offers a retrospective on the Canada Greener Homes Grant (CGHG), which ended in 2024. The $2.6 billion program helped retrofit a half million homes over four years (creating 75,000 jobs in the process). Over the next 20 years, those retrofits are expected to save households $3.8 billion in lower energy bills. The report calls for a new program to pick up where the CGHG left off and accelerate deep retrofits in line with Canada’s emissions reduction targets.
In Building Toward Low Cost and Carbon, Clean Energy Canada lays out the case for using lower carbon designs and materials in new building construction. Significant emissions reductions are possible for only a small price premium—typically only a few thousand dollars on projects costing millions. Moreover, many of those clean alternatives, such as steel produced using electricity rather than coal, are Canadian-made. Implementing “buy clean” procurement policies and strengthening building codes can maximize the industrial and affordability benefits.
On the worker front, a new CCPA report by Simon Fraser University’s John Calvert, Building Better, dives deep into the use of community benefits agreements in British Columbia’s construction industry. These agreements require contractors on major public infrastructure projects to use unionized labour, to support a minimum share of apprenticeships, and to prioritize local workers and workers from historically excluded groups. Workers are also required to undergo training to address toxic worksite cultures that have driven many women, Indigenous and racialized workers out of the construction industry in the past. The result has been a marked diversification of BC’s construction workforce, which is vital not only from an equity perspective but also for ensuring enough skilled workers are available to meet rising demand for green homes and other infrastructure. It’s a model other provinces should consider.
Public development banks an untapped driver of Canada’s green transition
A public development bank is a state-owned institution that offers financing and financial services to support national development goals, often by supporting public interest projects that are not profitable enough to attract private finance. Canada already has several, including Export Development Canada, the Business Development Bank of Canada and the Canada Infrastructure Bank (CIB), but they have historically focused on private sector growth and have long been guilty of subsidizing fossil fuel extraction.
A new article from the World Resources Institute explores how public development banks could be better leveraged to accelerate decarbonization around the world. To do so, many banks need more capital in order to make transformative investments. They also need more internal climate expertise and a clear mandate to prioritize decarbonization.
Canada’s development banks are no exception. I often cite Thomas Marois’ 2022 report for CUPE, A public bank for the public interest, which explores the failures of the CIB to support transformative public projects. The bank’s dogmatic commitment to public-private partnerships has raised costs, undermined quality and failed to accelerate necessary green projects across the country.
The good news is that Canada’s public banking sector has the potential to play a more productive role, either by reforming existing institutions or by creating new ones.
It’s a fact recognized by the hundreds of mayors who signed on to the new Elbows Up For Climate Action campaign, which includes a public development bank in its recommendations. For full disclosure, I was involved in developing the policy asks for the campaign. But the overwhelming support from local leaders across the country speaks to its broad appeal at this crucial moment.
Research radar: the latest developments in work and climate
Federal fossil subsidies totalled $30 billion in 2024. According to the latest fossil fuel funding report from Environmental Defence, the federal government provided nearly $30 billion in financing and subsidies to the fossil fuel industry last year, headlined by a $21 billion top-up for the Trans Mountain pipeline. As reported in the National Observer, the federal government initially tried to obscure this latest infusion of capital as a loan before it was revealed that most of the money will not be paid back. Despite its exorbitant cost to the public, the TMX pipeline is not operating at full capacity and is increasingly unlikely to break even.
Climate action is a key component of diversifying away from U.S. trade. The comically villainous backsliding on climate action south of the border has some in Canada wondering whether we should follow suit. However, as Clean Energy Canada reminds us in The World Next Door, Canada’s 10 largest trading partners outside the U.S. all have net-zero commitments and carbon pricing systems. Engaging more with non-U.S. partners means redoubling our efforts to reduce emissions and to produce clean goods and services.
High-emission lifestyles holding back Canada’s climate ambitions. In a new brief, Climate Action Network International concludes that Canada’s medium-term climate commitments fall well short of our fair share in the global context. The biggest sticking point—hardly news if you’re a regular Shift Storm reader—is the outsized contribution of the oil and gas industry to Canada’s emissions. More interesting is the report’s criticism that Canada has introduced no measures to “address high emission lifestyles.” This is something of a third rail in Canadian climate politics. Most Canadians want emissions to go down, but fewer are prepared to make lifestyle compromises, such as foregoing cars or eating less meat.
Oil and gas industry continues to ignore climate promises. In a new report, Paris Maligned III, Carbon Tracker finds that no oil and gas company is even remotely aligned with the Paris Agreement. It’s an unsurprising finding given the fundamental incompatibility between their business model and the imperative of achieving net-zero emissions. However, the report has two important takeaways. First, we need to stop believing oil and gas companies when they say they will align their business practices with climate goals. Second, Canadian oil sands companies are among the least aligned with global climate goals and therefore the least competitive in a decarbonizing global economy. That’s a huge liability for Canada.
Young workers need to be empowered to tackle climate change in the workplace. The U.S.-based Labor Network for Sustainability published Earth is a Hot Shop, which reports back on its Young Worker Listening Project. The report paints a picture of a generation deeply concerned with the climate crisis but struggling to make a positive difference in an economy that does not prioritize sustainability. Among other initiatives, it calls on unions and employers to create spaces for young workers to engage productively on climate issues.
Solar and wind driving global electricity growth. Ember, a UK-based think tank, published its latest Global Electricity Review, which finds that low-carbon sources produced 40 per cent of global electricity last year. Solar and wind are the fastest-growing energy sources and now account for 15 per cent of total electricity generation. Canada has the highest per-capita electricity consumption in the world, according to the report. Although we benefit from a mostly clean grid, there is a clear need to improve our energy efficiency.
Two academic deep dives on the green economy. For the nerds, a special issue of the journal Regulation & Governance explores how the field of political economy can reorient itself to better foreground climate change. The issue is fully open access and offers a number of interesting global perspectives. Also, a new book from the University of Ottawa’s Ryan Katz-Rosene, The Growth–Environment Debate, offers a critical survey of the arguments for and against economic growth in the context of sustainability. Check out the latest episode of the Ecopolitics Podcast for a useful overview of the book.
