Dear Prime Minister-designate Carney, 

We, the undersigned climate-concerned organizations and individuals, congratulate you on your recent victory. 

This is an important moment for Canada. Across the country, people are suffering from the cost-of-living crisis. Food prices are skyrocketing. Home insurance premiums are surging. Financial losses from extreme weather events have hit record-breaking levels. This is in large part due to climate destabilization funded by our very own public and private financial institutions, not to mention fossil fuel profits-driven inflation. It’s estimated that we’ve lost $25 billion in economic growth due to climate change since 2015; Canadian households are already paying more than 700$ / year on average. President Trump’s economic war with Canada only promises to make it worse if we don’t make a decisive change and course-correct.  

Canadians are looking to you to meet the moment we’re in with the courage and forward-looking leadership you are known for. We are counting on you to put forward legislation that will genuinely help future-proof Canada’s economy: climate-aligned finance policy. 

When testifying on the Climate-Aligned Finance Act last year, you said we need to move away from the “negative impact of Canada’s slow progress in building a sustainable financial system on investment, job creation and competitiveness of our economy” and create a “virtuous circle of large-scale investment, faster decarbonization, more jobs and faster growth.”

Recognizing the outsized role financial institutions played in driving the climate crisis, you convened a broad coalition of financial actors in a ‘Net Zero by 2050’ pledge at the 2021 UN climate summit in Glasgow (GFANZ). But it only took a year for the alliance to break with the UN-backed greenwashing guidelines meant to preserve its integrity. Canada’s Big Six banks continue to recklessly lag behind world-leading institutions when it comes to climate alignment. Not only were they late to join GFANZ’s sectoral subgroup, the UN-backed Net-Zero Banking Alliance (NZBA), but they never meaningfully improved their track records as some of the world’s worst fossil fuel financiers before their mass exodus from the pledge this past January.  

Canada’s largest bank, RBC, still ranks as having the worst ratio of clean energy to fossil fuel funding among major global banks. And it’s not just the banks: our pension funds, insurance, and government financing must collectively and cohesively shift away from funding short-term fossil-flation and long-term climate chaos. If Bay Street was a country, it would be the world’s fifth largest emitter. 

Having had a front row seat to this failure of self-regulation, you must also see that the important work of aligning finance with a climate-safe future can no longer be left up to financiers’ goodwill alone. As much as we hoped they would follow your lead and do the right thing, our financial institutions have proven the intrinsic limits of self-regulation — making it clear that voluntary commitments will not position Canada to build the strong economy we need to meet the costly threats of climate change, affordability, and disruptive actions south of our border.  

You know better than anyone how important it is for Canada to protect our long-term financial stability with strong regulations. You were the clarion call for climate action in the financial system, and we need you to once again be the sensible voice. Prime Minister Mark Carney, are you willing to stand up to the US administration and regulate our way out of costly unsustainable finance? Will you introduce the necessary incentives to ensure that Canada doesn’t fall further into the “tragedy of the horizon” that sacrifices future generations on the altar of short-term profit? Will you champion a forward-looking, climate-aligned financial system that levels the playing field? 

We know this is a matter of deep importance to you, and you’re not alone. Three out of four surveyed Canadians want financial institutions to prioritize the long-term good of society over short-term profits. So we, the undersigned, extend the same request to you as has been made a thousand times over to other federal party leaders.

To meet the moment we’re in, and tackle the challenge to our cost of living and national sovereignty, please ensure your party’s platform includes climate-aligned finance policy as part of a strong plan to future-proof Canada’s economy. 

We trust you’ll do the right thing. 

Signed by: 

350 Canada
Ateliers pour la biodiversité / Workshops for Biodiversity
Atlantic Canada Climate Network
Calgary Climate Hub
Canada’s Clean50
Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment
Canadian Health Association for Sustainability and Equity (CHASE)
Canadian Interfaith Fast For the Climate
Canadian Unitarians For Social Justice
Citizens for Public Justice (CPJ)
Citizens’ Climate Lobby Canada
Climate Action Network-Réseau action climat Canada (CAN-Rac)
Climate Caucus
Climate Legacy
Climate Reality Project Canada
ClimateFast
Coalition for Responsible Energy Development in New Brunswick (CRED-NB)
Coalition Sortons la Caisse du carbone
David Suzuki Foundation
Decolonial Solidarity
Ecojustice
Ecology Action Centre
Environmental Defence Canada
Équiterre
For Our Kids
Friends of the Earth Canada
Generation Squeeze
Grand(m)others Act to Save the Planet (GASP)
Green 13
Greenpeace Canada
Le Mouvement d’éducation et de défense des actionnaires (MÉDAC)
Music Declares Emergency Canada
Northwatch
Office of Religious Congregations for Integral Ecology (ORCIE-BCRÉI)
Ontario Clean Air Alliance
Oxfam-Québec
re•generation
Sacred Earth Solar
Shift: Action for Pension Wealth and Planet Health (A project of Makeway)
Stand.earth
West Coast Climate Action Network, with 265 member organizations
West Coast Environmental Law Association
World Animal Protection

Individual Signatories:

Alice Chipot
Ashley Anthony
Carole Holmes
Frances Deverell
Gavin Pitchford
Guy Dauncey
Joy Kennedy
Kathleen Moleski
Liz Armstrong
Louise Brownlee
Lyn Adamson
Rita Bijons
Roland Montpellier
Roman Talkowski
Victoria Creese 

A French version of the open letter can be found here.