A group of 138 sustainability leaders from business, academia, environmental NGOs, and government, along with 70 of their affiliated organizations, are scorching the climate rollbacks in the Carney government’s 2025 budget and urging the Liberal Party’s 50-member climate caucus to push for better.

“Overall, the 2025 Budget is neither ‘transformative’ nor ‘nation-building’, and fails to tackle the broader and accelerating climate crisis—a crisis that will persist long after the temporary ‘tariff emergency’,” the groups write in a sign-on coordinated by Canada’s Clean50.

“The measures omitted from this budget could have simultaneously addressed both the tariff and climate emergencies, laying the groundwork for a resilient, future-ready Canadian economy, while not rolling back some existing greenwashing legislation, supported by 93% of Canadians,” the letter adds.

[Disclosure: Energy Mix Productions is a co-convenor of the Green Resilience Project, which received a Canada’s Clean50 Top Project of the Year award in October, and Energy Mix Publisher Mitchell Beer was an honouree in 2022.]

The letter was due to be published at 9 AM November 17, but it was already making waves by then.

“A senior member of one minister’s team contacted me to discuss the letter and defend [the budget],” Canada’s Clean50 Executive Director Gavin Pitchford told The Energy Mix in an email. “I responded that we were not meeting the moment. And we aren’t. We have someone in the midst of a heart attack. The moment requires an ambulance, stat! Instead, the Liberals have called Uber—but are defending that, by saying [other parties] would make the patient walk.”

The signatories commend the government “for the few budget measures that take meaningful steps toward addressing the climate emergency,” including methane regulations, maintaining the federal industrial carbon pricing framework, public transit electrification, tax measures to advance clean energy investment, and establishment of a Youth Climate Corps. But they list five areas where the budget falls short:

• Insufficient support for the clean economy sector;

• Cuts to national reforestation and nature restoration efforts, including the decision to cancel the 2 Billion Trees initiative;

• Rolling back federal anti-greenwashing rules;

• Setting the stage to abandon the government’s watered-down, long-delayed cap on oil and gas emissions;

• Dropping existing climate risk mitigation measures and failing to introduce new ones, “leaving communities at significant risk for future forest fires and extreme weather.”

The signatories urge Liberal climate caucus members and MPs from all parties to advocate for restoring and strengthening climate policies and programs. “’Elbows up’,” they declare, “means skating to where the puck is going. Not sitting back in our own end, defending an aging goalie.”