A recent open letter from Canada’s oil and gas titans urging the federal government to fast-track fossil fuel export projects by wielding emergency powers and stripping regulation has drawn a sharp rebuke from the federal energy minister, as well as a leading health expert.

Sent to the leaders of Canada’s four main political parties on March 18, the letter is signed by CEOs from Canada’s four largest pipeline operators, nine biggest oil and gas producers, and the Houston-based ExxonMobil subsidiary, Imperial Oil.

Against the backdrop of Donald Trump’s tariff war and talk of annexation, which have ignited discussions of boycotts and patriotism across Canada, they write that public support is growing for exploiting Canada’s energy resources to boost prosperity, defend sovereignty, and act as “a force for good” in the world.

The CEOs call on the federal government to declare a “Canadian energy crisis” and “use all its available emergency powers” to push through “dramatic regulatory changes” and expand oil and gas production.

While they nod to Canada’s “environmental stewardship,” which positions the country as a global leader in providing energy security, the executives also seek to roll back key climate policies. The letter urges the government to remove the federal industrial carbon price, drop the oil and gas emissions cap “to allow the sector to reach its full potential,” and overhaul and simplify the federal Impact Assessment Act and the West Coast tanker ban.

“Most of the political leaders at the federal and provincial level are reaching out to all of us, asking: ‘What’s a better way forward?’” Enbridge CEO Greg Ebel told the Globe and Mail. “So, we think this is a constructive addition.”

Wilkinson Replies

“I read with interest, and I must say, disappointment, your letter,” Energy and Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson wrote in his reply to the fossil CEOs on March 20. Ottawa has worked to support Canada’s oil and gas sector, he wrote, adding that he didn’t see regulation impeding growth.

“Last year we saw record production of Canadian oil and gas, record profits being made by your firms, and extremely healthy paycheques being earned by your and other executives in the sector.”

Wilkinson also rejected any move to weaken environmental oversight, warning that “gutting the assessment process” and overriding constitutionally protected Indigenous rights “would only take us backwards to the Harper years, where good projects were held up in court and nothing got built.”

Any retreat from tackling pollution would also drag down the sector’s competitiveness in a world “that inevitably must reduce the use of unabated hydrocarbons,” he added.

As an example, he pointed to the European Union’s upcoming Border Carbon Adjustment mechanism, a tariff designed to level the playing field between EU industries subject to strict regulation and foreign producers operating under weaker climate policies. He warned that the mechanism would make high-carbon goods more expensive to trade, restricting Canada’s ability to diversify markets and “imposing new costs at the worst time for our economy.”

Reducing reliance on the United States is “more urgent than ever,” Wilkinson added, citing Trump’s annexation rhetoric—a threat that the CEOs’ letter never explicitly mentions.

While Wilkinson repeatedly expressed “disappointment” with the executives, he noted some areas of alignment, citing government support for pipeline and LNG projects. While he didn’t mention it in his letter, he has also signalled openness to a new west-to-east pipeline to replace Enbridge’s Line 5, which supplies nearly 50% of Ontario’s and Quebec’s fuel via Michigan.

Alberta Energy Minister Brian Jean dismissed Wilkinson’s response as “a load of crap,” while former Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers CEO and Axe the Tax campaign strategist Tim McMillan called the minister’s letter “very disingenuous” and “arrogant.”

A ‘Force for Good’

While silent on domestic energy concerns—including concerns that gas prices will spike in British Columbia once the province connects to the global LNG market—the CEOs celebrate Canada’s fossil fuel industry as a “force for good” in the world. “Every year, 8.3 million people die globally due to inadequate access to heating and cooling and indoor air pollution from burning over open fires, kerosene, wood, animal dung, crop waste, and coal,” they write, citing a study by Monash University. Canadian fossil energy, they say, could replace that.

They also highlight investments in carbon capture and storage (CCS) to reduce emissions intensity, arguing that fossil fuel expansion supports global climate efforts. But their demand that the industrial carbon levy be abolished undermines this claim, given that that mechanism “seemed to be the only way to make most investments in carbon capture economically viable,” Globe and Mail columnist Adam Radwanski writes in a recent column.

Health experts are calling out the letter’s claims about fossil fuels improving quality of life.

“Only oil and gas executives could take a study that concludes climate change is causing more deaths due to abnormal temperatures and use it to argue for more fossil fuels that cause climate change,” family physician Melissa Lem, president of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment, told The Energy Mix. “Their arguments are disconnected from reality.”

She added that “it’s time for oil and gas billionaires to stop trying to misinform us about the basic facts: Fossil fuels are causing an escalating number of deaths due to pollution and climate disasters—and safer alternatives exist.”

Research has long linked fossil fuel pollution to severe health risks, including leukemia, respiratory diseases, heart attacks, and premature deaths, Lem said. Meanwhile, climate-driven extreme heat and worsening wildfires—both exacerbated by fossil fuel emissions, including LNG—are causing rising hospitalization and mortality rates.

The CEOs frame their call for expanded oil and gas exports as a humanitarian effort to reduce energy poverty abroad, but they overlook the market-driven shift toward decentralized renewables like off-grid solar in regions such as rural Africa. And their argument that Canadian oil and gas can protect people from indoor air pollution overlooks the reality that clean energy solutions already exist without the harmful side effects of fossil fuels.

Latest from Prime Minister Mark Carney is that the Liberals intend to fast-track investments in carbon capture and storage, as well as technology to prevent methane leaks—in tandem with the federal emissions cap which he has confirmed will remain in place should his party retain its hold on power.