Green Economy Network

The Green Economy Networks podcast Class & Climate is back, with new host Em Thompson.

On this eighth episode of Class & Climate: Perspectives on a Green Economy,  Em Thompson sits down with Martin Empson to reveal how COPs (Conferences of Parties) have bureaucratized climate organizing.

Martin Empson is a climate activist from the UK and the editor and a contributor to System Change not Climate Change, a book of essays from socialists around the world on the nature of capitalism’s ecological crisis and the radical response that is needed.

Class & Climate is a podcast series from Perspectives Journal and the Green Economy Network that maps how climate action can deliver jobs and long-term affordability for workers — while debunking myths that these goals are a zero-sum trade-off with a clean environment.

Hi there

After a brief period of hiatus we’re very happy to announce that we will be returning to regular programing on May Day, May 1 at 1pm EST for a webinar on protecting workers’ safety in the climate crisis.

Our panelists, to be announced shortly, will speak about the vital work trade unions do to protect workers from rising temperatures, new pollutants and other stresses on the job and what they are doing to ensure that their members are safe.

We will have a Zoom link to RSVP shortly but if you would like to discuss joining the panel, please reach out to convener@greeneonnet.ca

See you there.

Our Guests:

Alex Callahan: National Director of Health, Safety and Environment with the Canadian Labour Congress.

 Anne Tennier: President and Chief Executive Officer of the Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety 

Roger Duffy: Health & Safety Representative Canadian Union of Public Employees

Registration info:

You are invited to register for a Zoom webinar!

When: May 1, 2026 01:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)

Topic:  Green Economy Network

Register in advance for this webinar.

See you there

Ahead of COP30, climate scientists called out governments for  retreating on emissions reduction measures in the face of a deepening climate emergency – and, with the 2025 budget, Canada’s government signalled its intent to do the same.

In a pre-COP30 brief, Canada’s Environment and Climate Change Minister Julie Dabrusin announced her government’s intent to “to advance international efforts to address climate change” on the 10th anniversary of the Paris Agreement. Yet, the same government has expressed ambivalence towards the Paris Agreement’s targets, with Mark Carney previously stating that he is more interested in “results rather than targets and investments rather than bans.” 

Given these inconsistent positions, how serious is the Canadian government really about addressing the climate crisis? What direction is the Carney government heading?

One of the biggest challenges of finding clarity in Canada’s climate policy is cutting through the technical minutiae that often obscures politics and policy. Behind the targets, agreements, policy papers, press conferences and, apparently, COP30 branded cruise ships, it is difficult for anyone to see what has actually been accomplished.

Under the Paris Agreement, Canada committed to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to a maximum of 440 megatonnes by 2030. The 2024 emissions data shows that Canada remains stalled at 694 megatonnes and is not on track to meet its target. This kind of failure appears to present two options for the Carney government: perform better or promise less. 

The new budget’s Climate Competitiveness Strategy cancels climate rules and initiatives, while cutting billions of dollars in planned program spending in favor of tax credits and corporate subsidies. What counts for climate competitiveness in this budget are tax credits for liquified natural gas (LNG) facilities and carbon capture schemes, totalling $325 million over the next five years.

Programs that were intended to either monitor pollution or store emissions to meet Canada’s Paris Agreement targets are all facing cuts as part of Carney’s austerity and investment plan.  Environment and Climate Change Canada is expected to take a $1.3 billion cut in annual program spending by 2030. The Impact Assessment Agency of Canada and the Canada Water Agency – federal regulators meant to safeguard the environment – are also facing cuts. Former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s $3 billion plan to plant two billion trees, a legacy program meant to build a potential carbon sink to help reduce future emissions, has also been scrapped by Carney’s budget. 

Carney has signalled that the levies polluters pay as part of the industrial carbon price, where the average industry pays the comparatively-low price of $8.40 per tonne of emissions, may not increase despite the commitment needed to meet Paris Agreement targets. Somehow, the federal government is also confident that the planned oil and gas emissions cap will “no longer be required” even though data from the Parliamentary Budget Officer stated clearly that, in the absence of the cap, “upstream oil and gas emissions will exceed the legal upper bound” by 2030.

Capping upstream emissions from production activities, i.e from the extraction of fossil fuels, without capping the actual volume of oil and gas going to market was always questionable. But now Carney’s budget is combining talk of real climate action with commitments to “maximise carbon value for money” and “protect the competitiveness of oil and gas.” Even if one understands this charitably, it would seem to preclude any plan to seriously reduce total emissions any further. One can have the cleanest oil extraction process in the world, but if the actual volume of fossil fuels getting burned remains constant or increases, say, in the interest of maximizing carbon value for money, it’s a rather moot point. Total emissions will still rise, the climate crisis will intensify and the poorest in the world will bear the brunt of the costs.

When Carney promised a budget of “sacrifice” he clearly did not mean a sacrifice for energy company owners. What this does mean, however, is sacrifice for Canadians in the form of cuts to programs, cuts to public sector jobs, and climate inaction.

This page exists to bring together progressive policy organizations’ responses to the 2025 federal budget. Keep an eye on this page, as it will continue to be updated in the coming days.

Post-election budget could plunge Canada into another federal election by Canadian Centre of Policy Alternatives

Oil and gas trumps climate action in brutal federal budget by Hadrian Mertins-Kirkwood (National Observer)

Basic Income Canada Network 

Canadian Alliance to End Homelessness

Canadian Arts Coalition

Canadian Housing and Renewal Association

Canadian Labour Congress | Congrès du travail du Canada

Canadian Mental Health Association

Canadian for Tax Fairness

Centre for Future Work

Child Care Now

Cooperation Canada | Coopération Canada

Generation Squeeze

Institut de recherche et d’informations socioéconomiques

Migrant Rights Network

National Union of Public and General Employees

National Right to Housing Network

Nature Canada

Public Service Alliance of Canada | L’Alliance de la Fonction publique du Canada

The Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada | L’Institut professionnel de la fonction publique du Canada

Right To Food

Unifor | Unifor (Français)

Canadian Centre For Policy Alternatives Senior Researcher and GEN board member Hadrian Mertins-Kirkwood was on CPAC, this week.

He discussed the failures of Canada’s existing EV subsidy scheme and the path to building up Canada’s green industrial capacity.

See the video, below.

The Green Economy Network (GEN) is a coalition of labour, environmental, and social justice organizations working to build a green economy in Canada. We are hiring a National Convenor to work with the GEN Management Committee and the GEN Members’ Council to convene GEN members for collaborative advancement of our organizational goals.  

Compensation: $27/hour part-time (average of 20 hours/week) with the possibility of increasing hours over time. 

Location: remote first with preference for Ottawa or Toronto based candidates 

+ Maintain regular contact with members in between scheduled meetings to ensure consensus and progress on GEN priorities. 

+ Organize and facilitate GEN meetings, symposia, and public-facing events. 

+ Build and execute a communication and media strategy to promote GEN’s policies as a consensus of labour unions and environmental and social justice organizations. 

+ Maintain GEN’s website and social media presence. 

+ Synthesize communications products from research and engagement developed by member organizations. 

+ Develop fundraising among stakeholders and non-member organizations. 

+ Other duties as required, such as coordinating lobby meetings with Members of Parliament and writing briefs, backgrounders, or popular education materials for members and the public. 

+ Solid understanding and experience with climate change issues and policy, and the Canadian climate and labour movements. 

+ Experience with internal and external communications. 

+ Experience working with either labour unions and/or environmental groups and/or Indigenous communities will be an asset. 

+ Organizing experience is an asset. 

+ Strong written and verbal communication skills. Demonstrable skill in both official languages will be a further asset. 

+ Proficiency with WordPress, or similar CMS, and social media. 

+ Fundraising experience. 

Please send expressions of interest (resume and cover letter) to convenor@greeneconomynet.ca by August 21, 2025 at 3pm ET/12pm PT.

GEN is committed to employment equity and encourages members of equity-seeking groups to apply. 

Class & Climate: Perspectives on a Green Economy is a new podcast series from Perspectives Journal and the Green Economy Network that chats with the policy experts and front line trades workers about how climate action can create good jobs, make life more affordable, and debunk the myth that workers and the environment are at odds.

Hosted by Nick Pearce, National Convenor at the Green Economy Network, Class & Climate features conversations about the challenges of green industrial policy, and how workers can lead the way to fight inflation and climate catastrophe.

The series is being released over the course of the federal election. Subscribe to the Perspectives Journal podcast to get notified when the next episode is released. Here’s what you may have missed:

Economist Jim Stanford and the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives’ Hadrian Mertins-Kirkwood define what green industrial policy is and explain why it’s having a renaissance in the middle of the Trump trade war. In this episode, Class & Climate argues that green industrial strategy can make life more affordable in the long-term, and reduce our dependence on fossil fuels while charting an independent economic course for Canada.

Lindsay Amundsen of Canada’s Building Trades Unions explains what a just transition really means for workers—and how union-led training programs are preparing the workforce for the green economy. Amundsen makes the case for public investments in training, and for putting workers—especially those in carbon-intensive industries—at the centre of climate planning.

Listen to the Perspectives Journal podcast, available to subscribe on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Amazon Music, and all other major podcast platforms.

The federal clean electricity regulations introduced today are a win for Canadians and lower emissions, but any change to the country’s grids must do more to support workers.

If done correctly, these regulations can help create hundreds of thousands of decent jobs in communities across Canada, lower energy bills and avoid hundreds of millions of tonnes of pollution that contribute to the droughts, floods and wildfires that wreak havoc across the country.

That will only be possible with workers at the table, substantial investments in skills and training, and a total commitment to creating good unionized jobs. 

These changes are a key part of the Green Economy Network’s Common Platform. Our Platform urges:

• Canadian electricity to be net-zero by 2035.
• $40 billion for transmission, renewables, upgrades and Indigenous and community power.

That’s why the regulations are welcome, but also why more must be done to complement them with a robust green industrial strategy described in the Common Platform that puts Canada on competitive footing with the European Union and the United States. 

To maximize its potential, Indigenous and community ownership and benefits must also be included to lock-in the support new energy projects need.

Further: the weakening of some of these regulations will mean more gas plants are slated to be built and that some fossil fuel plants will continue polluting to 2045 or later.

The fight to win jobs and an affordable, reliable, 100 percent clean electricity will continue, and we will keep fighting for affordable, secure, clean power for all with support for the workforce behind it.

It’s up to the provinces now to plan and implement electricity plans that go further than these federal regulations, and deliver for the workers and communities that produce and use clean energy.

The Green Economy Network (GEN) is mourning the loss of its founder Tony Clarke, 80,  a renowned advocate for social and environmental justice who leaves a foundational legacy in the Canadian climate movement.

In the years after the financial crisis of 2008, Clark united a broad coalition of those who saw the need to face the looming climate crisis with a plan that would address the ecological, economic, and equity challenges of our time. 

The result was GEN, an organization that continues to bring together diverse voices to support a just transition for Canadians.

In the early days of the organization, Tony did much of the spadework of coalition-building — producing GEN’s first documents and research and ensuring the network met its goals without a dedicated staff.

Clarke, a prolific writer and organizer who also led the Polaris Institute, acted as a mentor to many who went on to take on leadership roles among GEN’s membership. His profound impact bringing together diverse causes and movements continues to inspire GEN’s work.

Matt Firth, senior officer at CUPE National and a member of the GEN management committee, remembers that Clarke’s passion and commitment were always balanced with personal warmth and good humour. 

“Tony’s real strength was finding common bonds between people and the organizations that they represented,” Firth said. “I certainly miss him.”

GEN is committed to honouring Clarke’s memory by continuing to forge these ties between movements dedicated to a socially, economically and environmentally just Canada.