The proportion of Canadians who identify environment and climate change as a top-three concern has jumped 50% in the last four months, from 14 to 21%, as a summer of epic wildfires, heat domes, and flooding creates what the Angus Reid Institute calls \u201cthorny challenges\u201d for Prime Minister Mark Carney and his government.<\/p>\n
The results of an online panel<\/a>, released last week, show<\/a> one in six voters who supported the Liberal Party in 2025 saying they would now support the New Democratic Party, with the Liberals\u2019 lead over Pierre Poilievre\u2019s Conservative Party falling<\/a> from 13 percentage points in February to five points in June and four in July.<\/p>\n \u201cWildfire season is a stark reminder of the evolving threat a changing climate poses,\u201d Angus Reid writes. \u201cCanadians have taken notice of the smoke affecting their summer activities,\u201d and \u201camong these Liberal-to-NDP switchers, climate change ranks as a top concern for half\u2014twice the number among those who remain with Carney\u2019s party,\u201d Angus Reid writes.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat has emerged is a clear division of priorities between those who still support the Liberal Party and those who now say they would vote for the NDP,\u201d the survey report states. \u201cThat latter group is twice as likely to say that climate change is a top concern (50% vs 27%) and more than three-times as likely to be concerned about inequality (34% vs 10).\u201d<\/p>\n Environment and climate also rank as a top-three issue for one-third of likely Bloc Qu\u00e9b\u00e9cois voters, the survey research agency reports. The survey picked up a generational split in climate concern, as well, with respondents under age 45 almost twice as likely to identify the climate emergency as a top-three concern.<\/p>\n Across all age groups and voting intentions, the cost of living and inflation still dominate as the top issue, with 60% of respondents listing it in the top three, followed by health care at 38%, housing affordability at 25%, the economy at 23%, and environment and climate change at 21%. Climate does not rank as a leading priority for likely Conservative or Liberal voters.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re starting to see some buyer\u2019s remorse for the Carney agenda, not just among New Democrats who voted Liberal last time, but among long-term Liberals who are in a state of real surprise at how far the prime minister has gone in the direction of all-in on AI, unlimited military spending, it seems, and doubling down on fossil fuels in the midst of a climate emergency,\u201d NDP leader Avi Lewis told<\/a> The Canadian Press last week.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are lots of progressive Liberals who are ready to come over, and I think that we have the potential to flip some seats in the next election in places that may surprise people.\u201d<\/p>\n Climbing Out of a Nadir<\/p>\n The increased focus on environment and climate \u201cis less a return to concern levels from highs of almost ten years ago, and more of a climb out of a nadir of attention on the issue which had been pushed to the side by broader concerns over inflation and the cost of living (which persist) and a focus on relations with the United States,\u201d Angus Reid states.<\/p>\n But the rebound is something that veteran U.S. climate communicator and organizer Bill McKibben predicted in late June in his The Crucial Years newsletter. [If you haven\u2019t subscribed yet, what are you waiting for<\/a>?]<\/p>\n \u201cOne benefit of having watched the climate story from the start is that I tend not to panic when \u2018climate\u2019 is temporarily eclipsed as an issue, almost always thanks to the hard work of Big Oil,\u201d McKibben wrote<\/a>. \u201cThe new authoritarians have managed to intimidate many of the centrist pols in much of the world who are no longer willing to talk much about \u2018climate\u2019; indeed, there\u2019s a closet industry of pundits and consultants advising them not to.\u201d<\/p>\n But \u201cit\u2019s never occurred to me that this state of affairs would last very long\u2014physics is running this show, and it won\u2019t be long denied,\u201d he added. \u201cAnd now I think we can see the next of these cycles firing off\u2014and this one, I think, will be climactic. We have a chance to ensure that civilization comes out of this one focused on the physical world.\u201d<\/p>\n In a blog post earlier last month, Re.Climate Senior Advisor Cara Pike warned that climate communications in Canada are shaped by petrostate politics. \u201cPlans to push ahead with new pipelines and [liquefied natural gas] are colliding with concerns about climate change\u2014forcing climate communicators to rethink how they talk about energy, prosperity, and security,\u201d Pike wrote<\/a>.<\/p>\n Flipping the Script<\/p>\n \u201cFossil fuel politics stand in the way of literacy, engagement, and action on climate change,\u201d she added.. \u201cCanada is among the countries where partisan polarization related to climate policy has increased the most. Along with the United States and Spain, this spike is being driven by polarization along economic ideological lines. The contradiction is at the heart of Canadian public opinion on climate and pipelines.\u201d<\/p>\n Pike suggested four strategies to flip the script from fossil fuels to energy transition:<\/p>\n \u2022 Lead with the future Canadians want, rather than fossil fuels;<\/p>\n \u2022 Pitch shared prosperity\u2014in the form of affordable energy, stable employment, lower household costs, and innovation and economic resilience through clean energy and low-carbon technologies\u2014rather than \u201cpetro-prosperity\u201d;<\/p>\n \u2022 Honour the important role oil and gas has played in Canada, without becoming trapped in the past;<\/p>\n \u2022 Tell stories of a successful energy transition, not just climate stories.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The proportion of Canadians who identify environment and climate change as a top-three concern has jumped 50% in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":153257,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[98],"tags":[4554,6935,111],"class_list":["post-153256","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mark-carney","tag-byline-internal","tag-dow","tag-mark-carney"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153256","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=153256"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153256\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/153257"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=153256"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=153256"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=153256"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}