FOSSIL OF THE DAY AWARD – CANADA
18 November 2025
Today, with a heavy heart, we award the Fossil of the Day to Canada – more than a decade since it last received this dishonour.
Canada receives the award because the new government of Prime Minister Mark Carney has flushed years of climate policies down the drain, and is completely ‘Missing In Action’ at a COP where multilateralism needs to be saved. In addition to the backsliding on policies tackling Canada’s climate-destroying pollution, his Environment Minister Julie Dabrusin has chosen inaction and silence where leadership was urgently needed.
While the world at COP30 is actively working to establish the Belém Action Mechanism – a new global architecture to ensure a just transition for workers, communities and Indigenous Peoples – Canada remains silent in the conversation. We see the G77+China, the European Union, and others propose ways forward for the Just Transition Work Programme, yet Canada remains vague. The country offers only sympathetic nods to domestic “sustainable jobs”, but no substantive commitment to the mechanism that could link global cooperation, justice, and climate ambition.
For years, Canada – with the relentless pressure and partnership of civil society – allowed itself to be pushed into real progress. It adopted legislation binding itself to its Paris targets and built the first economy-wide plans to meet them. It drafted long-overdue regulations to cap the oil and gas sector’s runaway emissions. It launched its first National Adaptation Strategy to shield Canadians from escalating climate impacts. Landmark legislation on economic diversification ensured that workers and communities had a seat at the table in shaping the transition. It even stepped into a rare moment of global leadership on Loss and Damage. And with Germany, it co-led the roadmap to mobilise the long-promised US$100 billion, exposing the failures of developed countries and demanding better.
All of this progress happened because communities, workers, Indigenous leaders, youth and civil society refused to give up.
But that was yesterday. Today, it’s all being torn apart.
Since taking office earlier this year, Prime Minister Mark Carney has systematically dismantled a decade of progress. All in a matter of months. His new “major projects” agenda, including LNG expansion announced just days ago, is a textbook case of an ‘Unjust Transition’ – fast-tracking fossil and infrastructure projects through communities with:
- disrespect for Indigenous rights, including Free, Prior and Informed Consent;
- disregard for democratic process;
- disregard for environmental assessment rules.
His absence from COP30 speaks volumes, as does Canada’s failure to announce a new post-2026 climate finance commitment – a glaring abdication at a COP defined by finance gaps and frontline urgency. And back home, Canada has been wearing hypocrisy as confidently and comfortably as it wears its national denim-on-denim look, masking fossil expansion behind the language of climate leadership.
Meanwhile, as climate impacts intensify across Canada, the National Adaptation Strategy sits untouched, gathering dust – a stagnation mirrored here in Belém, where Canada has brought no ambition to the Global Goal on Adaptation negotiations.
For all of these reasons – the dismantling of progress, the disregard for Indigenous rights, the silence on finance, the absence of leadership, and the growing gap between rhetoric and reality – Canada has earned today’s Fossil of the Day.
Canada: we expected better. Your people deserve better. And the world cannot afford your retreat.
Honourable Mention – European Union
The EU earns an honourable mention today for its tireless efforts to avoid talking about public finance provision – proving once again that when the Global South asks for public, predictable support, EU capitals reach for the snooze button. Despite soaring rhetoric, the EU refused to engage on a clear new adaptation finance goal, dodged the call to triple adaptation finance by 2030, and continued hiding planned ODA and climate finance cuts behind glossy reports. The sky may hold 27 stars, but tonight they’re shining a little dimmer.
-ENDS-
Notes to Editors
- Photos and video of today’s award ceremony: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1U5BCkJ6m0-bEhyJDMGtmkVgexLn7qdVy?usp=drive_link
- Fossil of the Day happens every day at 6pm in the COP30 Blue Zone, Zone D, Action Area 1. (This is near the delegation offices and before you get to Meeting Room 1.)
- The Fossil of the Day awards (which now include Ray of the Day and the Solidarity for Justice Award) were first presented at the climate talks in 1999, in Bonn, initiated by the German NGO Forum. During United Nations climate change negotiations (www.unfccc.int), members of the Climate Action Network (CAN), vote for countries judged to have done their ‘best’ to block progress in the negotiations in the last days of talks.
Contact: Attila Kulcsar, CAN International, akulcsar@climatenetwork.org, +44 7472 124872 (WhatsApp)