Candidates square off over energy's role in defending Canada from Trump

All federal party leaders say Canada must fend off the US from a position of strength, but whether new fossil fuel infrastructure can achieve that was hotly debated at the leaders’ debate Thursday evening.

The first shot came from Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre. Needing to land a knockout blow on front-running Liberal Leader Mark Carney, Poilievre said while Carney claims to want to deal with the US from a position of strength, Liberal “anti-energy” laws like the federal Impact Assessment Act were preventing new projects from being built. 

“You supported blocking pipelines in Canada that gave Donald Trump and the US a near-monopoly over our energy, and now you want to keep in place Bill C-69, the Liberal no-new-development law that blocks us from shipping our resources overseas,” he said.

Several major fossil fuel infrastructure projects have been built with that impact assessment law in place, including the Trans Mountain expansion project, LNG Canada, the Coastal GasLink pipeline, as well as major project approvals like Bay du Nord off the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador. 

Poilievre said his party would protect the environment, but that he believes Canada exporting LNG to other countries that burn coal, like India, would be a way to lower global emissions. 

That view is not supported by experts.

According to a recent study from Cornell University, emissions from American LNG are 33 per cent higher than coal, when processing and shipping are taken into account. The findings add to a growing pile of evidence undermining the argument put forward by fossil fuel companies that LNG can be a “bridge fuel” for countries burning dirtier fuels. 

In China, for instance, the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) found growing LNG imports have not reduced the country’s coal demand due to cost, energy security concerns and the “meteoric rise” of renewables. 

India specifically is working to reduce its imports of fossil fuels to protect its energy security, undermining the proposal Poilierve laid out. 

Carney’s ‘all-of-the-above’ approach

Carney said he would work with provinces to streamline environmental assessments, but when it comes to energy he took an all-of-the-above approach — reiterating his campaign promise for Canada to be an energy superpower in both clean and conventional energy. 

“I'm interested in getting energy infrastructure built,” he said. “That means pipelines, that means carbon capture and storage, that means electricity grids.”

Carney said the oil industry in particular must become low-carbon and endorsed the Pathways Alliance project as one his government would work to advance if elected. 

“One of the big projects we need to move forward with is carbon capture and storage — the Pathways project — so that we have oil and gas that is competitive not just today, but 10 years from now, 20 years from now,” he said. “As the world uses less, we want to have more market share.”

If the country boosts fossil fuel production, even if paired with carbon capture technology, global carbon emissions would still rise because the vast majority of emissions from fossil fuels comes when the fuel is burned. Climate science is clear that the planet will continue to warm to dangerous levels — leading to worsening extreme weather, premature deaths, lost species and disrupted economies — until greenhouse gas emissions reach net-zero (in other words, reduced until any remaining emissions created are offset by their removal from the atmosphere).

Singh and Blanchet focus on pipelines

NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh, whose party has been relatively quiet on the climate issue throughout the campaign, said he doesn’t know what Poilievre is complaining about when he criticizes the Liberals for being anti-energy when the Liberal government bought the Trans Mountain expansion project. 

“While these two compete about who is more pro-pipeline …  I think what we need to do, if we're talking about energy in our country, is we need to build an east-west grid,” he said. 

Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet noted that because pipelines typically take many years to build, new pipelines are an irrelevant tool to deal with US President Donald Trump. 

“We're in a very strange denial situation about climate change, which still exists and is very expensive,” he said. “And I'm sorry to crash your party guys, but you are telling fairytales. Clean oil and gas is a fairytale. Large scale carbon sequestration is a fairy tale.”

‘Surreal’

“Only Mr. Blanchet called out that ‘clean oil and gas’ is a fairy tale,” said Kathryn Harrison, a professor of political science at the University of British Columbia. “It underscores the persistence of the largest national parties in ignoring the downstream emissions from Canada’s oil and gas exports, and the economic risk that comes with that as the rest of the world acts to mitigate climate change.”

Harrison said that it felt “surreal” that climate change took a backseat to debates over building fossil fuel pipelines given that in the past four years the country has watched Jasper burn, record breaking wildfires and unsafe air quality, and over 600 people dying in a heat dome in BC. 

“Overall, what a sad state of affairs for Canadian political discourse on climate and energy policy,” said Caroline Brouillette, executive director of Climate Action Network Canada. “The conversation was disconnected from the state of the world in 2025 — and from the opportunities Canada should be seizing to build a truly resilient economy.” 

Martin Olszynski, an associate professor at the University of Calgary, told Canada’s National Observer that while the business case for many of these fossil fuel projects don’t exist, this election isn’t about convincing people as much as it is comforting them. 

“If the polls are saying a majority of Canadians are giving pipelines a second thought, you’d think twice before deciding to contradict them as a campaign strategy,” he said.