Unfortunately, there are many eager to use Trump’s tariff threats as cover to advance a ‘maple-MAGA’ agenda that includes gutting Canadian environmental protections and securing new subsidies for upstream oil and gas.

To protect the people and places that we love, we can’t allow American President Donald Trump’s bullying to set the political agenda here in Canada. He would love it if we followed him in abandoning hard-fought, years-long efforts to deal with real crises like climate change in favour of misinformation-fuelled, fake crises like paper straws. Instead, we should build the green homes, power grid, and transportation systems that Trump so despises.

Unfortunately, there are many eager to use Trump’s tariff threats as cover to advance a ‘maple-MAGA’ agenda that includes gutting Canadian environmental protections and securing new subsidies for upstream oil and gas. This includes a domestic lobbying campaign and collaboration with American far-right organizations like the Heritage Foundation, the principal architect of Project 2025 plan that has served as the blueprint for the Trump administration’s recent policy moves.

Tim Egan, president and CEO of the Canadian Gas Association, was a featured speaker at the most recent Heritage Foundation-organized ‘Whose World Order?’ conference. As one of the most powerful fossil fuel lobbyists in Canada, he would know that the Heritage Foundation is famous for falsely asserting that greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel burning present no harm to our well-being, so there is no justification for government intervention to curtail these emissions. Right on cue, Egan’s speech never acknowledged climate change as a threat that must be addressed. Instead, he attacked the goal of achieving net-zero carbon emissions—the official target of 102 countries including Canada—as “deeply ideological” and “the language of religion not commerce and the fervour for it is more cult-like than it is religious.”

Back at home, the CEOs of pipeline giants Enbridge and TC Energy are calling for a major rollback of Canadian environmental law while their colleagues demand taxpayers foot the bill for new pipelines. They want taxpayers—who already sunk $34-billion into building the TransCanada Expansion pipeline—to take the risk because they know there’s no business case for new pipelines. We’re also seeing fake grassroots groups with close ties to the oil industry pop up, echoing MAGA-style attacks on environmental advocates.

There is another path forward. Canada could follow the example of Europe, which doubled down on renewable energy when Russia tried to use fossil fuel exports as a weapon.

Rather than spending tens of billions more of public money on another pipeline for already-wealthy oil companies, we could be the stable, predictable alternative for clean-energy investments fleeing the United States. We could put thousands of Canadians to work building green, affordable homes using sustainably-harvested home-grown lumber. Homes heated and cooled by high-efficiency heat pumps powered by rooftop solar panels and a modernized East-West electrical grid that links clean power sources across the country. We could then travel to and from these homes using pollution-free, electrified transportation systems.

This would be good news for our pocketbooks and the planet. As an added bonus, it would enrage Trump.

That could be almost as much fun as watching Team Canada captain Connor McDavid score in overtime.

Keith Stewart is a senior energy strategist with Greenpeace Canada, and teaches a course on energy and environmental policy at the University of Toronto.

The Hill Times