Prime Minister Carney sold Canadians on his track record of making smart decisions and caring about Canada. 

But since coming to power, he has taken a wrecking ball to our environmental protections. 

First there was the Building Canada Act, which he rammed through Parliament in 2025. It gives Cabinet power to designate projects as being in the national interest, and allowing those projects to skip review processes and skirt laws that keep our communities, nature and wildlife safe.

However, that was not enough for PM Carney. In May, he proposed even more sweeping changes to decision-making on industrial projects, in effect gutting environmental and public oversight. This would be the worst evisceration of environmental law in Canadian history, far worse than what happened under Prime Minister Harper’s government in 2012. 

And it’s all just to bulldoze through risky fossil fuel projects like a new bitumen pipeline.

Prime Minister Carney is putting Canada’s environment, waters and rarest and most vulnerable species at risk

PM Carney wants to give Cabinet broad powers to approve projects before their impacts are understood, leaving Canadians in the dark about potential harms to their health, environment and vulnerable species.

The changes include:

• Giving Cabinet broad powers to pre-approve pipelines and create federal economic zones (which are alarmingly similar to Premier Doug Ford’s undemocratic “Special Economic Zones”), which would hand the prime minister and cabinet unprecedented powers to exempt entire regions of Canada from federal laws designed to keep us safe. 
• Undermining Indigenous rights by compressing the timelines for major project decision-making to just one year, rendering it nearly impossible to fulfil the government’s duty to consult impacted Nations. Rushing assessments also means less time to properly evaluate risks to human health and safety as well as fewer opportunities for the public to have a say. 
• Giving cabinet the power to authorize projects that further endanger vulnerable wildlife, like the iconic southern resident orca.

Once nature is gone, we don’t get it back. 

Only 75 Southern Resident Killer Whales Remain – PM Carney is putting them at risk 

The Southern Resident Killer Whale, and other endangered wildlife, are protected under Canada’s Species at Risk Act (SARA). Even with this protection, this orca population has dropped to just 75 individuals. 

Under SARA, all projects must pass a jeopardy test: Will this project jeopardize the survival or recovery of an endangered species? If yes, the government cannot authorize it. As long as the protections remain in place, the government can’t greenlight the projects it wants, like a new pipeline or port expansion.

PM Carney wants to give Cabinet the power to exempt projects from this test. If the proposal becomes law, there will be no enforceable way to protect vulnerable species when their survival conflicts with an industrial project.

Extinction is a choice — a choice about what we protect and what we sacrifice. 

Environmental protections are not red-tape 

We put project reviews and protective laws in place for species and ecosystems because without them, we faced expensive and dangerous disasters such as the arsenic in Giant Mine, in Yellowknife; the Sydney Tar Ponds; mercury in Ontario’s English and Wabagoon rivers; and localized species extinctions across the country. 

History tells us that weak environmental oversight seriously increases the chances of environmental disasters with cleanup costs in the tens or hundreds of millions, and taxpayers often end up footing the bill. 

PM Carney likes to say “nostalgia is not a strategy,” but make no mistake: if these proposals proceed, Canada will return to a more toxic, destructive and selfish era, when big industries destroyed and polluted as they pleased, leaving local communities to suffer — and all of us to pick up the tab. That’s the “nostalgic” past large multinational corporations want back. 

We want good projects to be get built

We know that there are lots of good projects that need to get built: solar and wind projects, battery manufacturing, grid infrastructure, public transit, clean manufacturing. The list is long.

But PM Carney’s agenda is focused on recklessly doubling down on antiquated fossil fuel projects. This ignores the fact that a global clean energy race is rapidly gaining momentum — and Canada keeps falling further behind.  

At a time of climate disasters, biodiversity collapse, and growing threats to Indigenous rights, Canada should be strengthening environmental protections — not dismantling them behind closed doors. 

Tell your MP to Save Endangered Orcas

For now, the proposal is just a discussion paper, not legislation. But the government has signalled its intent to table a bill as soon as Parliament resumes in September.

Tell your MP to Vote against any bill that puts health, nature and animals at risk in order to bulldoze through a pipeline.

What we fight to protect today, shapes how Canada will look for future generations.