Ottawa confirms it will miss emission targets unless major policy shifts are made

By: Natasha Bulowski, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Canada’s National Observer

Unless the federal government makes significant changes to climate policy, Canada is on track to miss both its 2026 and 2030 emissions reduction targets, according to a new government report.

The federal government quietly released its legally mandated progress report late on Wednesday and confirmed that, as expected, the country is significantly off track to meeting its emissions targets, Rick Smith, president of the Canadian Climate Institute, said in a press release responding to the report. 

With the current policy mix, Canada is set to reduce emissions 21 per cent relative to the 2005 baseline by the end of the decade. This falls well short of the national target of a 40 to 45 per cent reduction. Even when Environment and Climate Change Canada includes measures that have been announced but not yet implemented, the modelling only yields a 28 per cent reduction by 2030.

“The federal government needs to renew policy action over the next six months to course correct,” Smith said.

“Today’s report shows the most significant source of risk and uncertainty comes from the oil and gas sector and whether clean electricity and industrial policy can expand fast enough to support investment and electrification.”

The Liberal government under Prime Minister Mark Carney has jettisoned climate policy after climate policy since his first day in office, when he zeroed-out the consumer carbon tax. Since then, Carney has paused the EV sales mandate, cancelled energy efficiency retrofit programs and the proposed oil and gas emissions cap, given Alberta an extension on meeting its methane regulations, granted Alberta a carve-out on clean electricity regulations, gutted anti-greenwashing legislation, allowed tax-subsidized captured carbon emissions to be used to extract more oil and floated the possibility of creating an exemption to the federal oil tanker ban on BC’s north coast — all while promising more support for emissions-intensive projects like oil and gas pipelines and LNG export facilities.

The report says emissions from the oil and gas sector — which is increasing production — will “stay flat” through to 2035 in the current policy scenario, which includes methane regulations, industrial carbon price, clean fuel requirements and increased deployment of carbon capture and storage technologies.

In that scenario, the electricity and transportation sectors are expected to make the biggest reductions from now till 2035.

“In addition, the government’s lack of support for consumer incentives that support adoption of clean, electric technologies has slowed uptake. Affordability drives adoption — these same technologies lower energy bills and improve comfort,” Smith said. The government has not provided a timeline for when — or any indication whether — it will bring back EV incentives, which ran out in the last days of the former government under Justin Trudeau.

“Federal and provincial governments should not be stepping away from affordability measures. They should reintroduce or top-up programs that help Canadians acquire clean technologies like electric vehicles and heat pumps, and maintain the Electric Vehicle Availability Standard.”

In his resignation letter, former cabinet minister Steven Guilbeault hinted that the electric vehicle sales mandate could be on its way out permanently. The federal government paused the policy on Sept. 5, 2025 and ordered a 60-day review, the results of which are not yet public.

The progress report lists “priority measures” based on the amount of emissions reductions it is expected to yield, and other criteria. The electric vehicle sales mandate is not among the priority measures, but it is mentioned in the “additional measures” scenario that includes policies that have been announced but not yet implemented.

Despite the projections falling far short of the 40 to 45 per cent goal, the federal government says it is going to keep those targets in place. The country is also going to miss its 2026 target of a 20 per cent reduction: coming in at 16 per cent in both the current policy scenario and with “additional measures.”

The report talks about how the Ottawa-Alberta memorandum of understanding “advances multiple ambitious clean energy projects and measures” including industrial carbon pricing, but does not reference how a possible new pipeline would impact Canada’s national emissions.

In the section about Saskatchewan there is no acknowledgement of the province’s plan to continue using coal-fired power plants or the fact Premier Scott Moe paused the industrial carbon price in April.