Skip to main content

Environment, energy files get new ministers in cabinet shakeup ahead of COP26 summit

Share
OTTAWA -

Environmental groups say Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is sending a signal that combating climate change will fall to more than just one department in his government.

Jonathan Wilkinson is being shuffled from environment to natural resources in a cabinet shakeup today and Steven Guilbeault will go to environment after spending the last two years as the minister of heritage.

The changes come just days before Trudeau leaves for Europe where leaders' summits at the G20 in Rome and the United Nations COP26 climate talks are considered crucial to the world's effort to fight climate change.

Caroline Brouillette, director of domestic policy at Climate Action Network Canada, says Guilbeault won't take long to brief on the file because he has probably attended more COP meetings than anyone else in the Canadian delegation.

Greenpeace Canada senior energy strategist Keith Stewart says Guilbeault and Wilkinson, whose background is in clean technology, will bring a one-two punch to environmental issues around the cabinet table.

Both inside the Liberal government and outside of it, there is a desire to start responding to the climate change crisis with the speed, flexibility and total-government approach used as the COVID-19 pandemic hit.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 26, 2021.

IN DEPTH

Who is supporting, opposing new online harms bill?

Now that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's sweeping online harms legislation is before Parliament, allowing key stakeholders, major platforms, and Canadians with direct personal experience with abuse to dig in and see what's being proposed, reaction is streaming in. CTVNews.ca has rounded up reaction, and here's how Bill C-63 is going over.

Opinion

opinion

opinion Don Martin: How a beer break may have doomed the carbon tax hike

When the Liberal government chopped a planned beer excise tax hike to two per cent from 4.5 per cent and froze future increases until after the next election, says political columnist Don Martin, it almost guaranteed a similar carbon tax move in the offing.

opinion

opinion Don Martin: ArriveCan debacle may be even worse than we know from auditor's report

It's been 22 years since a former auditor general blasted the Chretien government after it 'broke just about every rule in the book' in handing out private sector contracts in the sponsorship scandal. In his column for CTVNews.ca, Don Martin says the book has been broken anew with everything that went on behind the scenes of the 'dreaded' ArriveCan app.

CTVNews.ca Top Stories

Local Spotlight

N.B. man wins $64 million from Lotto 6/49

A New Brunswicker will go to bed Thursday night much richer than he was Wednesday after collecting on a winning lottery ticket he let sit on his bedroom dresser for nearly a year.

Record-setting pop tab collection for Ontario boy

It started small with a little pop tab collection to simply raise some money for charity and help someone — but it didn’t take long for word to get out that 10-year-old Jace Weber from Mildmay, Ont. was quickly building up a large supply of aluminum pop tabs.

Stay Connected