Catherine McKenna, former Canadian Minister of Environment and Climate Change, draws on that experience in her new book, Run Like A Girl. Here she looks back on her tumultuous ride with carbon pricing and environmental policy. McKenna’s original election in 2015. She soon became, as she terms it, “baptized by fire” the new environment minister, and oversaw the implementation of carbon pricing in 2019. Her book chronicles her trials and tribulations while promoting the idea of consumer carbon pricing. As her journey progressed, she encountered fierce political opposition and public misunderstanding.
In her testimony, McKenna focuses on the weighty obstacles that were present during her time in office. She remembers how the former Liberal government, under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, failed to clearly communicate to Canadians how carbon pricing would affect their households. “Instead, they were fed misleading statements or outright lies by Conservative politicians like Pierre Poilievre, who repeatedly called the carbon price a ‘job-killing tax’ that needed to be ‘axed,’” she writes. This miscommunication further muddied the waters in public perception of her administration’s initiatives and ultimately weakened their impact.
The book explores her deepening frustrations with the implementation of the Paris Agreement, which she had done so much to negotiate. McKenna Pay attention to how this landmark accord was key in making both government and industry move on emissions reduction, and forcing them to lead. She asserts that her upcoming report will further explore how the Paris Agreement has played a crucial role in driving commitments to lower emissions.
McKenna’s preference, it seems, is for a “revenue-neutral” approach to carbon pricing. This idea was based on the vision of former U.S. Treasury Secretary George Shultz. Internal resistance proved challenging. Pushing this idea internally wasn’t easy. Many of you, especially those at the Prime Minister’s Office, pushed to use all those new dollars to fund green initiatives,” she claims. This internal struggle exposed the painful rub of trying to do fiscal conservatism while achieving progressive environmental outcomes.
McKenna encountered many obstacles along the way, but she never gave up faith. She drew motivation from her work with heavyweights such as Mark Carney, former Governor of the Bank of Canada and current United Nations Special Envoy on Climate Action and Finance. “I’ve worked with Mark Carney when I was minister. He came to Canada, he supported our policies. We talked about the importance of carbon pricing,” she notes.
She writes about her exasperation with how the federal government is messaging on new climate measures. McKenna takes issue with the auditor general’s conclusion that the Liberals failed to communicate the expected cost of carbon pricing to Canadians. This basic failure to communicate drove the public’s distrust. She has been fiercely opposed to the federal government’s political games that undermined climate progress. “The announcement was beyond cynical. It was stupid. While it certainly created a storm of confusion and resentment beyond the borders of Atlantic Canada, it hampered the federal government’s ability to meet its climate objectives,” she contends.
As chair of the United Nations high-level expert group on net-zero emissions commitments by non-state entities, McKenna is helping to galvanize and promote effective climate policies. She advocates for transformative change—a global Green New Deal. Her report on the Paris Agreement’s impact comes amid ongoing uncertainty about Canada’s commitment to its 2030 emissions reduction targets under Carney’s leadership.
