Environment Minister Julie Dabrusin may be willing to hear environmental groups’ concerns, but advocates say she has limited power to act on them as Prime Minister Mark Carney centralizes decision-making and prioritizes major resource development.

Since becoming prime minister in March 2025, Carney has axed key Trudeau-era environmental policies such as the consumer carbon price and oil emissions cap, all while plotting out plans to streamline the regulatory process for major resource projects.

These moves have drawn protests from prominent environmental groups, who have accused the PM of abandoning the government’s fight against climate change.

But they say their concerns are falling on deaf ears, accusing Dabrusin of being either unwilling or unable to act as a counterweight on cabinet and seemingly resigned to watch from the sidelines as the Carney government moves forward with its major projects regime.

One environmental advocate said that Dabrusin’s only advice to them when they brought forward concerns around the government’s proposed regulatory changes for projects like new pipelines was to participate in the public consultations.

That advocate added that when similar concerns were raised to Secretary of State Natalie Provost that these prospective reforms would undercut efforts in the government’s new nature strategy to protect species at risk, she acknowledged that she couldn’t protest any of those changes.

Similar accounts from advocates describe Carney’s projects regime championed by cabinet heavyweights Tim Hodgson and Steven MacKinnon as facing relatively non-existent pushback from Dabrusin and Provost, and even questioning if there’s much being done by the Liberals’ environment caucus.

Dabrusin has no lack of climate credentials.

A lawyer turned community activist, she first won election to the House in 2015, taking over as the MP for one of Toronto’s most progressive-leaning ridings.

She was the parliamentary secretary to the environment and climate change minister and the energy and natural resources minister from 2021 and 2025, a time period that coincided with the Conservatives’ renewed attacks on the Liberal carbon pricing scheme.

In that role, Dabrusin led the Liberals’ defence against accusations from Pierre Poilievre and his team that the consumer carbon tax was driving up costs and fuelling inflation.

But that consumer carbon tax was the first climate retreat for the Liberals after Carney eliminated it on his first day as prime minister in March 2025.

Then there was the pause of the electric vehicle sales mandate in September and the agreement with Alberta in November of that year to eliminate the oil and gas emission cap. This was part of a deal to pave the way for a new oil pipeline to the West Coast.

In a matter of months, several key climate policies Dabrusin had spent the past Parliament defending went up in smoke.

It’s not as if Dabrusin was relegated to the sidelines. She had been appointed environment minister in the post-election cabinet shuffle in May 2025, and took over responsibility for nature and Parks Canada when Steven Guilbeault resigned in the wake of Ottawa’s pipeline deal with Alberta.

A force of nature or a force of national interest? 

Earlier this spring, the federal government unveiled A Force of Nature, a $3.8 billion strategy that commits to protecting 30 per cent of Canada’s lands and waters by 2030.

Two months after the strategy release, the feds published a discussion paper that proposed ways to fast-track major infrastructure developments, specifically, to eliminate duplication for coordination between government departments and consultation processes.

However, environment advocates saw the proposal as one that’s contradictory to the major nature strategy.

Rachel Plotkin, Boreal project manager at David Suzuki Foundation, explained the new major projects proposal goes “way beyond” the scope of just cutting down red tapes.

“We think that the way that the major project’s agenda is being framed is a way to shortcut the mitigation hierarchy and kind of jump right to the last stage, which is the offset state,” Plotkin said in an interview with iPolitics.

Plotkin cited specifics like allowing some construction activities to start before an impact decision is made or authorizing the environment minister to adjust impact environmental conditions for projects, all seems to define environmental safeguards as “red tape” that needs to be cut to create “direct pathways.”

When tied back to the nature strategy, which Plotkin said was framed in a very “nature positive” language, focuses on mitigating ecological risks.

“That does not align with Canada’s commitment to halt and reverse the loss of nature,” Plotkin said. “We feel that what they’re proposing sets a terrible precedent and will have terrible impacts into the future.”

She said the government should instead assess ecological risks at the very beginning of the planning process, rather than approving projects first and relying on mitigation afterward — by following a mitigation hierarchy, looks at avoiding damage where possible, minimizing impacts if they cannot be avoided, restoring affected areas, and using offsets only as a last resort.

Radio silence 

Akaash Maharaj, director of policy at Nature Canada, echoed similar sentiment when it comes to “unintended consequences” driven by national interest projects, however noted that the government is “behaving” in this way because it’s simply what Canadians want.

Both Plotkin and Maharaj said their organizations have had multiple meetings with the environment minister, but neither has been granted a meeting with the prime minister.

“I don’t feel let down by those ministers, but I do think they are reflecting the fact that they carry less power in decision making,” Akaash Maharaj, director of policy at Nature Canada said in an interview with iPolitics. 

“The prime minister has currently not agreed to meet with any representatives of the nature community since he became prime minister,” Maharaj said, noting the “vivid contrast” the meetings professional lobbyist from oil and gas sectors are granted.

In a statement sent to iPolitics, a spokesperson from the Prime Minister’s Office said they have met with “numerous environmental stakeholders” both before and after the reveal of the nature strategy.

“The Secretary of State for Nature, the Minister of Environment and Climate Change, and members of our government continue to meet with environmental stakeholders consistently to build a stronger Canada through protecting what matters most, including the magnificent land and waters we have inherited,” Sofia Ouslis, press secretary to the PMO said.

But that characterization is further disputed by Attiya Jaffar, Country Manager at 350 Canada, a global grassroots movement focused on shifting towards renewable energy. 

“As far as we know from grassroots lobbying efforts, whatever [Dabrusin’s] constituents have tried to meet with her, she’s not made that space,” Jaffar said in an interview with iPolitics. 

“She’s been around for a long time as an MP, and I remember… she did have climate change town halls under the Trudeau government—but now there’s just radio silence.” 

Asked if advocacy groups had clearer access under Trudeau’s leadership, Jaffar said there were clearer communication lines. Now, it feels like the government has placed a stronger priority on “massive deregulations” for infrastructure developments. 

“We’re seeing this shut-out of this complete kind of exclusion of citizen voice,” Jaffar said. 

Spokespeople from both Dabrusin and Provost’s offices responded saying both ministers continue to work towards Canada’s commitment to conserve 30 per cent of the lands and waters by 2030, as outlined in the nature strategy. 

“We remain committed to net-zero by 2050, as fighting climate change and protecting nature are both a moral imperative and an economic necessity,” Keean Nembhard, press secretary to the minister of environment, climate change, and mature, said in a statement. 

Provost’s office added that the office is “focused on delivering on the mandate she received from the prime minister” to uphold their commitment. 

More public support? 

Maharaj raised that Canada’s government has become increasingly centralized over decades with more decisions being made by the PMO, ministers then end up spending more time explaining and defending government decisions rather than making them.

Instead of pushing the agenda from within the cabinet, Maharaj said influencing government policy may require building enough support to pressure the prime minister’s office.

Maharaj pointed to Guilbeault’s resignation last fall, as well as former environment minister Catherine McKenna’s departure from federal politics. 

“That was somewhat horrifying for me, because many NGOs like ourselves… spend a great deal of our time trying to persuade the minister of the environment to do the right thing, and here was a minister for the environment saying, ‘I’m incapable of doing the right thing, you people who are outside of government have more,’” Maharaj said. 

While stronger outside pressure may be a way, Greenpeace’s Salomé Sané said the actions showed otherwise. 

Sané said in early June, environmental groups gathered in Ottawa to talk about the government’s nature plans with Dabrusin. 

“We delivered a 20-minute long petition with 116,000 plus signatures of folks across Canada who were demanding a strong nature law to Minister Dabrusin, specifically because we wanted to highlight the need for her as in her role to advocate more for nature protection,” Sané said. 

Sané described the experience as a “very real policy incoherence.” 

“It’s been discouraging to see that, and I think there was a desire for much stronger advocacy at the prime minister’s office, specifically for nature protection and stronger regulation rather than what’s currently happening right now,” Sané  said.

Maharaj suggested that because of Carney’s background as a banker, the prime minister has approached the government by placing significant weight on expert advice while relying on a relatively narrow circle of voices. That approach may be effective for monetary policy, he said, but governing a democracy requires broader public engagement and legitimacy.

“I could wish that he had a wider scope of people whose expertise he took, but I think that this government needs to widen the circle of voices that it hears, just so it can make better decisions,” Maharaj said.

“It’s also the case that not all ministers have the ear of the prime minister,” he said.

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