Scrap the cap - Sierra Club Canada

Calls to scrap the cap from the Alberta Government are complete nonsense. We recently held an exhibit of artefacts from climate disasters which featured testimonies from survivors calling for an emissions cap entitled Protect What We Love.

Find out more Canada emissions cap facts (below)! There’s also a different fact sheet about the causes of wildfires and the links to oil and gas companies here, like how the burning of fossil fuels made the spate of 2023 Canada wildfires at least twice as likely and the fire-prone weather at least 20% more intense. You can listen to our full podcast on the emissions cap below too.

Quick Canada Emissions Cap Facts

The emissions cap is NOT a carbon tax: Without an effective cap on oil and gas corporations other sectors and Canadians would need to carry the weight of reducing their emissions to offset the emissions of oil and gas corporation. An emissions cap is about fairness – it’s about making oil and gas corporations do the same work the rest of us are doing to cut our emissions.
The cap is more than fair: Oil and gas coporations, while only 5% of Canada’s economy, are Canada’s most polluting sector causing around 30% of national emissions. Between 1990 and 2022, emissions from oil sands production grew by 467% and conventional oil production by 24%. Meanwhile, other sectors, and individual Canadians, cut their emissions. This is cap on wealthy corporations, it is NOT a cap on individual people.
The emissions cap is easy for oil and gas corporations to implement: The heavy lifting is done by methane reductions and “the IEA has shown that nearly half of the global oil and gas industry’s methane emissions can be reduced at no net cost…. Oil and gas companies in Canada can eliminate 75 per cent of their methane emissions at an average cost of only $11 per tonne.” Extremely cheap given their corporate profits.
The cap does not make inflation worse but oil and gas coporate profits are: Oil and gas corporations have also seen huge profits while Canadians by contrast are facing hard economic times: “Of every dollar of inflation over the last two years in Canada [from 2023 back], 25 cents of that has gone to oil and gas and mining extraction profits.” Average world incomes will drop by almost a fifth within the next 26 years as a result of the climate crisis, and the costs of damage will be six times higher than the price of limiting global heating to 2C.
The emission cap is NOT a production cap and will NOT harm the economy or jobs: Oil and gas corporations said previously they could meet the emissions targets in this cap, this holds them to that promise. The recent claims of Deloitte and S&P Global studies which used rigged assumptions do NOT change this fact under any realistic scenario. Oil and gas corporations have accepted mass sums of taxpayer money for carbon capture and storage based on the claim, those same corporations made, that they could reduce emissions. The heavy lifting under the emissions cap is actually done by cheap-to-implement methane emissions reduction measures that will not cost these corporations much to implement. Listen to our recent podcast below for details.
The emissions cap is NOT controversial: Two recent independent polls found a majority of Albertans support a cap on emissions. 7 out of 10 Canadians also support the cap. 89% of Canadians also back tougher methane regulations according to a recent survey.
Canada needs an emissions cap: The commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development of the Office of the Auditor General of Canada has concluded that “the federal government is set to miss its 2030 target to cut carbon emissions by at least 40 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030” and that the emission cap needs to be implemented soon.
- Canada has very high per capita emissions relative to other countries, and historical emissions, but our country’s failure to meet emissions targets is not individuals’ fault, this failure is the fault of large oil and gas companies which fail to act. We can’t ask other people with much lower per capita emissions to act on climate change if we don’t act to regulate these companies in Canada.
- Our emissions don’t just impact climate change, they also cause severe health problems here in Canada, which we can reduce with a cap. Emissions reductions here can also help provide solutions to other places to make sure they never need to grow their emissions.
- The International Energy Agency is calling for a 60 per cent reduction in oil and gas emissions by 2030 to avoid the worst climate catastrophes.
- Thirteen oil and gas corporations operating or based in Canada, including five of the six that make up the Pathways Alliance oil sands lobby group, are on the list of 88 big carbon polluters being called out for a major share of the forested lands lost to wildfires in North America between 1986 and 2021.
Oil and gas corporations were consulted on the cap: In February alone, corporate oil and gas lobbyists met with federal government officials at least 91 times.
LNG should NOT be given special treatment under the emissions cap: Producing and transporting LNG releases methane, even a small amount of which can make it as bad a greenhouse gas emitter as coal or worse. There’s also no evidence LNG exports would significantly reduce coal use elsewhere.
The emissions cap saves lives: This year tens of thousands of Canadians were forced to evacuate because of wildfires, and Indigenous communities were particularly affected. A fair cap on emissions from oil and gas, at the same level as Canada’s national climate target (45% below 2005 levels by 2030), would avoid the premature deaths of approximately 4,860 people in Canada over a decade, and come with economic benefit of CAD $45.1 billion, according to a new analysis from the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment (CAPE), this is before considering the climate change and non-fatal impacts of the air pollution prevented by a strong cap.
With wildfires and floods and heat waves now upon us, does what we do on climate change even matter anymore? The impacts we are seeing are bad – and we need to brace for what is to come. But activism up until today has stopped emissions that would have already pushed us past tipping points. Every bit of climate pollution we stop helps stop damage from getting even worse.
I know good people who work in the oil and gas industry, many of them are concerned about the cap: Oil and gas workers and their families need to be supported as we transition to cleaner energy. As the global demand for fossil fuels declines, we need rules that both deal with climate change that hurts us all and create opportunities for people affected by the change in how we generate and use energy. The President of the Canadian Labour Congress welcomed the announcement of the framework and Canada’s Building Trade Union has also come out in favour of the proposed cap on emissions.

There are also a lot of general myths about climate change, you can find a full fact sheet on these too. Learn why CO2 is a pollutant and is not just ‘plant food,’ why climate change is caused by human oil and gas emissions, and why we need to act to reduce our emissions now.

Share these facts on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, or Tiktok.

At the end of the day the most important person in countering misinformation about climate change is you! When people try to come to conclusions about a climate issue they ask the people around them what they think – or tell them what they are already thinking.

Above is how to talk about the cap with those around you and at the dinner table with those you love. You can help spread the word!

No matter what’s in the news your one to one conversations with those around you will always have the biggest impact. So speak with family and friends about climate change and the cap on emissions in Canada and short circuit misinformation people in your life may be receiving via social media and the fossil fuel industry.