Back ‘Nation-Building, Not Nation-Burning’ Projects, 250 City Leaders Urge Carney

A coalition of more than 250 mayors and city councillors from across Canada is calling on the federal government to keep #ElbowsUp with nation-building projects that respond to the climate emergency, after a “staggering” one in four Canadians in at least 200 communities experienced the impacts of climate change this past summer.

More than 15 million people faced “evacuations, unsafe air quality, extreme heat, or severe storms in their communities,” Elbows Up for Climate said in a release Wednesday. Nearly 40 non-Indigenous and 88 Indigenous communities were evacuated, with tens of thousands of people displaced, and 417 wildfires are wildfires are still burning.

The release landed just days after early reporting from the Canadian Climate Institute showed Canada’s emissions reductions flatlining in 2024 while climate pollution fossil fuels accelerated.

The coalition has identified more than 200 communities and regions that dealt with specific climate impacts over the summer, not including one in seven First Nations that faced wildfires, evacuations, extreme heat, and air quality warnings.

In the release, coalition co-chair and former Toronto mayor David Miller took aim at the first batch of major projects that Prime Minister Mark Carney announced earlier this month. “LNG Canada is both a carbon bomb and an entirely foreign-owned project: what happened to ‘Elbows Up’?” he asked. “This is a moment for investing in nation-building, not nation-burning projects.”

Instead, the municipal leaders are urging Carney and his government to take on a list of nation-building projects that will “help us build an economy that is significantly independent from our neighbour to the south and will materially help our efforts to lower our greenhouse gas emissions and our reliance on burning fossil fuels,” Miller told The Energy Mix in an interview. The media release reiterates the coalition’s call to federal party leaders during last spring’s federal election to sign on to a project list that includes:

• A national clean energy grid;

• Building two million energy-efficient, non-market homes;

• Energy retrofits for low-income homes and multi-unit buildings;

• A national high-speed rail and intercity bus system;

• Implementation and funding for a “national resilience, response, and recovery strategy.”

So far, Miller said the response from MPs is coming in at two different levels.

“The bigger one, but only slightly, is, ‘look, we’re in tough because of what’s going on in the [United States]. We can’t think about anything but jobs right now. This is environmental stuff,’” he said.

However, with a growing contingent open to the idea that climate infrastructure projects also build the economy, Miller said he’s “cautiously optimistic” that “we’re going to broaden the numbers of Members of Parliament who are receptive to these ideas to a majority. It is requiring some work, there’s no question about that, but there’s a good core and we’ve got a good starting point”—namely housing minister and former Vancouver mayor Gregor Robertson, who’s been “working on climate issues for decades.”

Climate Emergency ‘Changes You’

The mayors and councillors carried a similar message in an open letter to federal party leaders in mid-April, a couple of weeks before the April 28 federal election.

“Leading through a climate emergency changes you,” the coalition said at the time. “You can’t witness elderly neighbours overheating in low-income apartments during a heat wave, and not recognize the critical role of well-insulated, affordable housing. You can’t comfort people who have lost everything in floods and fires, and not wonder how we will afford to rebuild. You can’t watch your kids and loved ones choke on toxic wildfire smoke without knowing the time to act boldly on climate change is right now—because later is too late.”

Already, they added, “we’ve watched wildfires rip through nearly every part of our country. Just like you, we were stunned when Lytton disappeared off the map. Then parts of Halifax went up in flames. Last year, wildfires engulfed the iconic and beloved Jasper. What’s next? Who’s next?”

This week, Jasper Mayor Richard Ireland said it’s long past time to get funding in place for the resilience and response strategy the mayors and councillors are asking for.

“Jasper knows all too well the challenges and the heartbreak of evacuation, and responding to and recovering from climate disaster,” he said in the release. “Protecting communities and mitigating the impacts from climate change catastrophe protects lives, property, and local economies.”

“On the ground, we are linking arms—First Nations, rural municipalities, and cities—because wildfire smoke and unsafe air know no boundaries,” said Winnipeg councillor Sherri Rollins. “But local governments can’t do it alone. The federal government must treat this as a nation-building moment.”

“Nation-building projects are only beneficial if they are decarbonized, respect treaty rights, and work to protect nature, not destroy it,” agreed Fredericton councillor Margo Sheppard. “To perpetuate pipelines and burning things when the world is moving away from these loses sight of the available, cleaner options that create jobs, improve air quality, and prevent premature deaths.”

Seize the Opportunity

With questions mounting about the limited up-front attention climate issues have received since Carney took office, Miller said he doesn’t think the PM has forgotten or left behind the work he did or the value(s) he espoused in his life before politics.

Carney “is playing his cards on this issue very close to his chest,” Miller told The Mix. “I think he’s been shrewd not to antagonize Alberta deliberately,” but “he knows as well as anybody in the world what needs to be done. One of the challenges is this big push for new fossil fuel infrastructure, and if you do that, it’s not there for the next year until congressional elections in the U.S. [Just 403 sleeps and counting—Ed.] “It’s there for the next 50 years, and it locks Canada into a huge amount of emissions if the infrastructure is being built to increase the exploitation of the reserves.”

That’s why the municipal leaders are emphasizing “sensible and obvious nation-building projects that will use Canadian resources like steel, and, you know, make sense. And it makes sense that they make sense, because local governments have to operate with common sense.”

The coalition’s wish list includes completion of a national clean electricity grid at a time when “it’s easier for us to export our clean energy to the United States than it is for people in Yellowknife to rely on clean energy from British Columbia,” Miller added. “It’s easier for people in New York and Cleveland to use Quebec’s clean energy and Ontario’s almost clean energy than it is for people in Alberta to use Manitoba and B.C.’s.”

And that, in turn, is just one part of the opportunity for Canada to recognize its own strength as the world’s ninth-biggest economy.

“We’re superb, and I think we need to think a little bit more that way,” Miller said. “We’re not this little tiny country beside a big one. We are a big, powerful country.” But to protect that status, he said Canada will have to build up its existing advanced manufacturing capacity by emphasizing sectors like clean vehicle manufacturing.

“The U.S. is abandoning that completely. Why don’t we take that over?” he asked. “We have a moment now where paradoxically there’s a massive opportunity because what the U.S. is doing, I think we need to seize it.”

Cover photo:  More than one-third of the Jasper townsite was destroyed by wildfire in 2024 (Laura Durno/Twitter)