Contribution short abstract

I explore how Canada’s fossil sector has recently regained cultural and political dominance—branding itself as guardian of sovereignty, economic growth, and national progress. What does this entail for climate action and energy transition in Canada today?

Contribution long abstract

I explore how Canada’s fossil sector has recently regained cultural and political dominance—branding itself as guardian of sovereignty, economic growth, and national progress—and what this entails for climate action and energy transition now. Under PM Mark Carney, and in the shadow of a renewed Trump threat, the oil and gas sector have been rapidly recast as the nation’s security blanket and the credible core of a “responsible” transition. Industry and allies now sell a two-track story: hydrocarbons as the only pragmatic political and economic option in a world of evolving threats, and hydrocarbons as partners to emissions reduction through CCUS, hydrogen, and “responsible” LNG. This narrative is deployed in conjunction with institutional moves—pipeline agreements, regulatory rewrites, and budget signals—that translate storyline into advantage, allowing extraction to expand while climate targets remain the horizon for legitimacy. The effect is a restored hegemony: extraction read as common sense, dissent coded as naïve or anti-sovereign, and climate language folded into a growth-first agenda. The paper maps this consolidation across media, government discourse, finance, and policy instruments associated with Carney’s influence, showing how risk is laundered as prudence and how “credibility” is aligned with capital allocation. Set against continental pressures, the result is a Canadian variant of energy nationalism that narrows the field of the possible: by redefining what counts as transition, fossil capital slows structural change while claiming to deliver it—and in doing so, shapes the terms on which climate action can be imagined, debated, and enacted.