Honourable senators, I rise today to speak to Government Inquiry No. 1., calling the attention of the Senate to the budget entitled Canada Strong, tabled in the House of Commons on November 4, 2025.

Budget 2025 ensures continuity and demonstrates clear efforts to modernize Canada’s fiscal framework. This budget resonates strongly with promises of a “generational shift” and even claims “Climate action is not just a moral obligation—it’s an economic necessity.” Yet when we look at the details, the plan repeats old formulas while deferring the bold action that true nation building demands.

The government’s new Capital Budgeting Framework gives the deficit a makeover, recasting almost every dollar as an investment. The plan promises to balance day-to-day spending with revenues by 2028-29 while nearly doubling capital expenditures from $32.2 billion in 2024-25 to $59.6 billion in 2029-30. By then, 100% of the deficit would be branded as investment spending.

But branding isn’t proof. Unfortunately, Budget 2025 offers no metric of return, no measure of efficiency and no test of climate alignment to show whether these billions being spent are building resilience and adaptation or simply deepening debt. The intent to modernize fiscal planning is welcome, but transparency on the real return of these investments — economic, social and environmental — is essential for public trust.

Budget 2025 also presents $25.2 billion in savings over four years through cuts to federal operating costs to reduce inefficiencies and automate processes. In the past, uniform cuts have rarely had desirable effects, and departments with smaller budgets have lost a far greater share of their operational capacity.

Environment and Climate Change Canada is expected to save $1.1 billion over four years through automation and program wind-downs. In comparison, Natural Resources Canada must cut up to 15% over three years by ending initiatives such as the 2 Billion Trees program. Efficiency and modernization are laudable, but cutting capacity in key departments undermines the very outcomes modernization seeks to achieve.

According to Professor Mazzucato, a leading economist at University College London, efficiency comes not from blunt austerity but from strategic governance. Cuts should target activities that do not create public value — for example, duplicative administration, outdated subsidies and siloed program delivery. Governments must protect and strengthen mission-oriented capacities, such as science, regulation, public procurement and co-creation with communities and Indigenous Peoples. In short, we must trim the bureaucracy around delivery, not the expertise that drives innovation and long-term economic and social returns.

The government calls its climate competitiveness strategy a central pillar of the plan to make Canada the strongest economy in the G7 based on results, not objectives. By cutting environmental protection initiatives and programs, Canada keeps, unfortunately, falling short of what is needed to compete in a global economy already moving toward clean energy and clean technology.

This year, it is predicted that about US$2.2 trillion will be invested in renewables, nuclear, electrical grids, battery storage, low-emission fuels, efficiencies and electrification, twice the amount expected to be invested in oil and gas.

According to the International Energy Agency’s 2025 World Energy Investment report:

Investment trends are being shaped by the onset of the ‘Age of Electricity’ and the rapid rise in electricity demand for industry, cooling, electric mobility, data centres and artificial intelligence . . . .

Dear colleagues, the “Age of Electricity” is here. In 2025, China, several U.S. states and the European Union invested US$627 billion, US$400 billion and US$386 billion respectively in clean energy. As leaders in the “Age of Electricity,” these states and nations are positioning themselves as electrostates. At the same time, several petrostates, including Canada, are expanding fossil fuel production and refusing to leave the fossil fuel era. Global trackers even indicate that Canada’s climate action appears to be stalling, rating it as “highly insufficient,” and while costly extreme weather devastates communities, nothing in Budget 2025 shifts this metric.

The new post-2030 carbon pricing trajectory and the “improved backstop” repackage commitments. The critical minerals sovereignty fund, worth $2 billion over five years, reprofiles existing Natural Resources Canada initiatives. The much-touted carbon contracts are likely too small to transform markets while the suite of refundable tax credits is a mere extension of programs launched in 2022 and 2024. Most concerning to me, personally, is the extension of the carbon capture, utilization and storage, or CCUS, investment tax credit.

First, CCUS projects are generally focused on extracting more oil or gas and less on storing carbon dioxide underground, so carbon capture and storage is more likely to increase greenhouse gas emissions than to lower them. Second, carbon capture and storage has a long history of underdelivering and failing to reduce emissions, and this is unlikely to change in the foreseeable future. Notably, the first large-scale carbon capture and storage project intended for negative net emissions began operating in 1996. After almost 30 years, there should be more progress and higher levels of large-scale implementation for a technology that presents real promise. The CCUS investment tax credit is likely to be another inefficient fossil fuel subsidy.

Ultimately, the climate competitiveness strategy in Budget 2025 takes small steps toward climate preparedness but falls short of the scale that climate and economic emergencies demand. The $40-million, two-year youth climate corps is welcome, of course, as are the $257.6 million for four leased firefighting aircraft and the $55.4 million for a new National Public Alerting System model.

These are very positive measures, but they’re very modest when compared to the record-breaking wildfires, floods and insurance losses, which cost $9.2 billion only last year.

Do we think Canada is so rich that we can continue wasting funds on inefficient subsidies and still expect to thrive in a global economy that is rapidly shifting toward low-carbon growth? The real question is whether Canada is keeping pace with the economic signals of competitiveness. Those signals are clear: Global investment trends now favour clean energy over fossil fuels; market competitiveness has shifted, with solar and wind now being the cheapest new electricity sources worldwide; policy direction in the EU, China and many U.S. states is driving capital into clean technologies; corporate shifts reflect the growing adoption of science-based targets and fossil-free portfolios; innovation in hydrogen, battery storage and circular models shows where future jobs will grow; the risk landscape is tightening as climate impacts strand high-carbon assets; and public demand overwhelmingly favours affordable clean energy and resilience.

Canadians needed clear signals of climate-aligned financial leadership in the budget, but few appeared. Under “Mobilising Capital for Transition to Net-Zero,” the government reconfirmed its plan to develop a “made-in-Canada” taxonomy, with completion delayed to before the end of 2026. It also indicated its intention to explore the development of a sustainable bond framework.

However, key initiatives were missing: a green nation-building fund to advance renewable energy and adaptation with Indigenous partners and a framework to align the financial sector with Canada’s legally binding climate commitments. Canada needs a clear framework to guide the financial sector in mitigating climate risks, redirecting capital toward resilience and decarbonization and reporting transparently on progress.

I advise you to read the news. Last week, the Bank of England did a major, big step in this direction.

When capital is diverted to assets that become stranded, growth is lost. Without climate-aligned financial flows, Canada faces a vicious cycle: inflation driven by climate shocks, rising indebtedness from bailouts and weak growth from stranded industries. We need a budget that funds clean growth and relies on a robust framework to shift finance toward low-carbon growth, fight inflation and secure long-term prosperity.

Other G7 economies are already integrating climate risk into regulation, creating taxonomies and redirecting investments toward clean growth. Without similar accountability, Canada risks becoming a “stranded-capital nation,” reliant on devaluing fossil assets while others seize tomorrow’s markets. Left unchecked, climate risk is inflation risk, debt risk and competitiveness risk.

Finally, in Budget 2025, the government announced its plans to update existing greenwashing provisions by removing the requirement for businesses to substantiate their environmental benefits claims based on internationally recognized methodology standards and repealing the ability of third parties to prosecute greenwashing claims directly before the Competition Tribunal. Currently, these provisions provide needed protections to consumers against false claims and require businesses to substantiate their claims based on international standards. The bottom line is that a business should not make any claim, green or otherwise, without sound evidence. Requiring claims to be substantiated based on international standards merely ensures that the evidence supporting a claim is sound. The growth of Canada’s green market depends on effective greenwashing provisions.

Budget 2025 could have been the moment when fiscal discipline met climate ambition. Instead, it leans on past frameworks, future promises and cuts that weaken delivery. The tools exist to align dollars with duty and finance with the future. Every dollar invested in adaptation and resilience generates more than $10 in benefits per decade.

Nation building must be rooted in innovation, economic competitiveness, energy independence and the mobilization of public and private financing for renewable and clean energy projects and community-led resilience building. This year, the seventh of nine planetary boundaries was breached for the first time. This means, dear colleagues, that the earth systems that support life and all economies are destabilizing.

A “Canada Strong” budget must deliver economic prosperity, security and healthy environments, all while addressing the multiple crises we so urgently need to tackle to ensure a sustainable future for all of us and future generations.

Thank you, meegwetch.