NDP Leader Avi Lewis shared the following statement in response to today’s implementation agreement between Prime Minister Carney and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith:

“This announcement marks the Carney government’s official surrender to the oil and gas lobby.

By gutting carbon pricing to the point of irrelevance, it has dismantled the last federal climate measure standing. We now have a federal government that no longer even pretends to rein in big corporate polluters.

While the rest of the world races ahead on renewables, building the economy of the future, the Liberal government is taking us backwards, locking us into more pipelines, more fossil fuel dependence, and more handouts for some of the richest corporations on earth.

An industry expected to make $90 billion in profits this year alone does not need more gifts from the public.

Yesterday’s release of the government’s so-called clean electricity strategy is a transparent attempt to distract from this latest capitulation to the fossil fuel industry – and it’s not even a ‘clean’ electricity strategy worthy of the name when it opens the door to more high-emission gas plants.

Prime Minister Carney is rushing Canada in the wrong direction.

His government has flooded the zone with sweeping changes all at once, bulldozing public debate, Indigenous consultation, and environmental protection along the way.

The message to Canadians is crystal clear: the C-suite asks, and Ottawa delivers. If you’re a powerful corporation, you go to the front of the line. If you’re struggling to pay rent, feed your kids, or find a family doctor, you’re told to wait.

None of these giant changes make our country more secure, independent, or stable. None of them directly address the cost of living crisis. All of them promise corporate welfare for the billionaire class, and more hardship for the 99%.”