With Justin Trudeau stepping down as Prime Minister, there was a faint hope that the “net-zero” madness of carbon taxes, climate fear-mongering, and wasteful measures would come to an end. But the election of Mark Carney in Trudeau’s stead is exponentially worse. If Trudeau was but an actor (and a bad one at that) putting a face to the Green agenda, it was Mark Carney who has been writing the script (see Carney… Finishing Trudeau’s Carnage). In other words, Alberta’s battle against Ottawa just became magnitudes more intense.
Carney is a former central banker with the Bank of England and Bank of Canada. In January 2020, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson appointed Carney to the position of finance advisor for the UK presidency of the COP26 United Nations Climate Change conference in Glasgow. He was the UN Special Envoy for Climate Action and Finance.1 In other words, Carney is Canada’s new face of a globalist agenda to utterly dismantle the oil industry and force unreliable, costly, and environmentally damaging “renewable energy” on the populace. Says Peter Foster for the National Post:
Carney’s climate plan is much closer to the notion of Soviet central long-term planning… What Carney ultimately wants… is a technocratic dictatorship justified by climate alarmism.
Peter Foster, National Post, Jun 05, 2021
“Of all the reasons not to elect Mark Carney as the next prime minister of Canada,” writes Lorrie Goldstein for the Toronto Sun, “his history as the world’s leading corporate booster of achieving ‘net zero emissions’ by 2050 is the biggest. He will also impose a new carbon tariff on Canadians — that’s right, a tariff, known as a “border adjustment mechanism” — on imported goods coming from countries his government determines are not doing enough to fight climate change. In the real world, that will raise prices Canadians pay for these products in the middle of an ongoing affordability crisis.”
This, on the heels of Canadians experiencing a surge in the cost of living.
Under the Trudeau Liberals’ decade in power, Canada experienced the worst record of economic growth since the government of R.B. Bennett during the Great Depression, in part because of their unrelenting attack on Canada’s energy sector, part of their so-called climate plan, for which federal taxpayers are paying more than $200 billion.
Lorrie Goldstein, Toronto Sun, April 26, 2025
But here it is in Carney’s own words from his book, Values: Building a Better World:
While many Canadians voted for Carney (apparently) to hit back at Trump’s tarrifs, the tragic irony is that they simultaneously hit themselves. Carney’s globalist agenda is to utterly “reset” Canada’s economy by adopting the World Economic Forum’s “stakeholder capitalism.” Foster pulls the curtain back on what exactly this means:
Mark Carney draws inspiration from, among others, Marx, Engels and Lenin, but the agenda he promotes differs from Marxism in two key respects. First, the private sector is not to be expropriated but made a “partner” in reshaping the economy and society. Second, it does not make a promise to make the lives of ordinary people better, but worse. Carney’s Brave New World will be one of severely constrained choice, less flying, less meat, more inconvenience and more poverty: “Assets will be stranded, used gasoline powered cars will be unsaleable, inefficient properties will be unrentable,” he promises.
Peter Foster, National Post, Jun 05, 2021
In other words, neo-communism with a green hat.
The response from Alberta’s Premier Danielle Smith has been swift. In a statement after the election, she warned Carney:
Albertans are proud Canadians that want this nation to be strong, prosperous and united, but we will no longer tolerate having our industries threatened and our resources landlocked by Ottawa.
Premier Danielle Smith, April 29, 2025
That was the diplomatic response. But on the pragmatic front, her United Conservative Party sent a clear message to the rest of the country with Bill 54, the Election Statutes Amendment Act. This paves a more practical way for the province to hold an independence referendum under the existing Referendum Act and the Citizen Initiative Act. Bill 54 has changed the conditions: currently, a petition must collect signatures from approximately 600,000 eligible voters (about 20% of Alberta’s eligible voters, based on the 2019 election turnout) within a 90-day period. Under the new bill, if passed, the new law will cut the number needed in half to 10%.
While the new bill addresses several electoral issues, such as corporate donations and MLA recalls, the softening for referendum requirements certainly matches the climate among many voters. Calls on social media for Alberta to separate from Eastern Canada were immediate and widespread after the Liberal minority government was declared. The anger towards Ottawa is palpable, not only for its continued trajectory to destroy Alberta’s economy, but also it’s thinly veiled disdain for Westerners. Hard to know how or where that comes from, but it was Trudeau himself in an interview with Macleans, who set the tone of condescension that has never gone away:
“Canada isn’t doing well right now because it’s Albertans who control our community and socio-democratic agenda. It doesn’t work.” [Interviewer] Lagace then asked Trudeau if he thought Canada was “better served when there are more Quebecers in charge than Albertans?” Trudeau replied: “I’m a Liberal, so of course I think so, yes. Certainly when we look at the great prime ministers of the 20th century, those that really stood the test of time, they were MPs from Quebec… This country – Canada – it belongs to us.”
Justin Trudeau to French interviewer Patrick Lagace on the Tele-Quebec program Les francs-tireurs (The Straight Shooters); Macleans, November 2010
Nonetheless, Premier Scott Moe of Saskatchewan struck a somewhat more conciliatory tone after Carney’s election:
I want to work alongside this federal government to build a strong and growing Saskatchewan. Today’s an offer, not an ultimatum.
Premier Scott Moe, April 29, 2025, Leader Post
As for those of us fighting against the well-documented harms of the wind industry, the battle will likely intensify. For Carney’s goal of “net-zero” carbon emissions by 2050 means utterly dismantling the oil industry and throwing billions of tax dollars at unreliable wind turbines and solar across the entire province and country. Which means we can look forward to not only certain economic hardship across the province but a power grid that will enjoy the kind of blackouts that hit Spain and France this week where they were relying entirely on wind and solar.
The only thing certain about the future at this point is that the future is uncertain.
Mark Mallett is a former award-winning reporter with CTV Edmonton and an independent researcher and author. His family homesteaded between Vermilion and Cold Lake, Alberta, and now resides in the Lakeland region. Mark is Editor in Chief of Wind Concerns.