Essay by Eric Worrall
“… She admits that when she became minister for energy and climate change … she had no idea what COP stood for. …”
Canada’s former climate minister on making a change, ‘aloof’ Trudeau and sexism
Maya Goodfellow
Wed 8 Oct 2025 16.00 AEDTCatherine McKenna’s memoir delves into thorny parts of being in office including death threats and being referred to as ‘climate Barbie’
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McKenna has recently published Run Like a Girl, which documents her time in government, among other things. Peppered with inspirational quotes, personal photos and campaign memorabilia, Run Like a Girl isn’t a straightforward memoir. She wrote it for “women and young people who want to make change”.
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But when it came to the climate, Trudeau shared her belief in taking action, and supported her.
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While under consistent attack by the right, McKenna oversaw what became aflagship policy, a carbon tax on large industrial polluters and on everyday fossil fuel usage …
She admits that when she became minister for energy and climate change in 2015, she was “not an expert in that space”; she had no idea what COP stood for. But a week after taking the post, she attended COP21, where the Paris agreement – the first universal, legally binding treaty on climate – was signed.
But there are big contradictions within the climate record of the Trudeau government. In the summer of 2019, less than 24 hours after the House passed a motion to declare that Canada was in a climate emergency, the government approved plans to triple the capacity of the Trans Mountain pipeline, which transports oil to British Colombia from tar sands in Alberta, a uniquely environmentally ruinous place for extraction. Tripling its capacity would remedy a problem for the industry: too much oil through too few pipelines meant oil sold at a discount to the rest of the world. The year before, Trudeau’s government had bought the pipeline for $4.5bn after the company tasked with the expansion threatened to walk away from the project because of protests and a legal challenge.
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After McKenna stepped down in 2021, Trudeau announced a pause on the carbon tax, while one of Mark Carney’s first moves after becoming prime minister of Canada was to kill off the carbon tax altogether.
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/oct/08/canadas-former-climate-minister-on-making-a-change-aloof-trudeau-and-sexism
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I guess one point in Catherine’s favour is she admits she didn’t know anything about climate change when she became minister for climate change. Then she announced climate policies so extreme even Trudeau and Carney cancelled them. But I’m sure she feels a great sense of achievement, whatever those achievements were.
The book “Run like a girl” is available here if anyone wants to read it.
If anyone can think of anything Catherine McKenna achieved, please lets us know in the comments.
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She also didn’t know the difference between Carbon Monoxide and Carbon Dioxide. A universal problem in our modern technological society is that very few of the politicians are trained in science and technology. She was a bad joke.
She also doesn’t seem to know the difference between Carbon and Carbon Dioxide.
Probably doesn’t know the difference between ice melting and sublimating.
It is not that they are not trained in science it is that in general they are just thick.
Yes. And suspectable to totally believing the last powerpoint presentation they get shown
Do you mean achievements or positive achievements?
She did inspire a great parody:
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0eZwV9AmzyY&w=640&h=360%5D
I guess this video is banned in the US…
The uploader hasn’t made this video available in your country
Try a VPN…I found it worth the watch….hadn’t seen it before despite being very skeptical of nearly ever McKenna fantasy policy… hard to believe it was a CBC comedy show that did that parody….
Why on earth would anyone in Canada worry about global warming/climate change? I remember years ago taking a flight from Moscow to San Francisco. It was non stop a great circle route. We flew over hundreds of miles of northern Canada. Snow, ice. trees. frozen lakes. I saw no wildlife and absolutely no sign of human habitation. I can’t imagine people thinking gradual and slight warming from the little ice age is detrimental to humanity. So obviously agenda driven.
That’s why AGW and warming is total BS and just part of an Agenda and has 0 to do with environment or climate..
If Canada would warm 2 or 3 degrees it would be still significantly colder than the USA .
Yet warming has officially only negative impacts on climate and humanity.
That’s total nonsense.
The main reason for replacing the Ice Age Scare with AGW was the fact that they realized that it is impossible to convince the masses to shut down power plants in an Ice Age scenario as an Ice Age requires a massive increase in energy production to compensate for the cooler weather.
Therefore the aerosol pollutant tax plans were dropped in favor of a co2 tax and co2 is now a pollutant.
Now your combustion cars will be faaed out because of co2 instead of Aerosols.
Yeah… if Antarctica warmed 2 or 3 degrees it wouldn’t even make it to zero degrees.
Did you mean “20 or 30?”
Well… I was trying to keep the same 2-3 degree range that climate ‘modelers’ say the temperature might increase but… yeah, with “The average temperature in Antarctica varies significantly by location and season, with the interior averaging around -43.5 °C (-46.3 °F) and coastal areas averaging about -10 °C (14 °F) in the warmest parts” it’d take an increase of 20-30 degrees for the average just to get to freezing.
“I saw no wildlife ..”
It is claimed that even elephants are not viewable from 30,000 feet. I’ve never been over an elephant at any height, so do not know. However, Canada’s Wood Bison, its largest land animal, can weigh up to 2,600 pounds but is still much smaller.
I worked FIFO for two years in Fairbanks, with flights home via Seattle every few weeks. Flying from Fairbanks to Seattle is like flying over the Star Wars Ice-world Hoth. All you see for three hours is mountains and snow.
One of the Fairbanks workers warned me it was going to get hot in summer. I asked “how hot,” he shuddered when he said “Like 80.” … it was probably -40 at the time.
80% to 90% of Canada’s population lives within 100 miles of the U.S. border
and there’s a reason for that.
People like keeping their fingers & toes from dropping off during 7 months of the year.
The other reason is Costco.
and Canadian Tire.
Who ever comes away from Canadian Tire having bought just the one thing they actually went there for?
That’s also cuz 400 years of explorers, miners, and immigrant farmers haven’t been able to penetrate consistently any further North than the yellow area through the nearly impenetrable Boreal Forest, Muskeg, barren grounds, and Tundra. By sea…not much further up the coasts. To the South, Canadians have made it much further but have mostly found that leaving politics in the hands of local Spanish speaking minority’s or majority’s results in a pretty good place to retire….
She was a Liberal Party member of Parliament, and the Liberal Party remains in power in Canada because they called an election declaring themselves to be the party best able to fight Trumps tariffs
…since about 80% of what Canada produces goes to the U.S which is on average about 100 miles away from Canadian population and manufacturing centers, and everyone except take-out window clerks, school teachers, welfare recipients and other gov’t workers know where their product purchasers are and that their jobs are probably on the line….Canada typically having twice the unemployment of the U.S. to start with, simply cuz lots of jobs can’t be done in the winter, the border is a goodly fraction of the entire planet at latitude 49, Canada is mostly mines, trees, and prairie etc……it was a big issue that voters felt needed resolving, more-so than the opposition parties’ cost-of-living platform.
Before election time…realizing that impoverishing the population for carbon taxes was not popular with voters, and that the opposition party was achieving popularity complaining about the cost of the climate agenda, Liberals cancelled the carbon tax at gas pumps….and rode to an election win on the tariffs/jobs issue. That didn’t work out with Trump piling 25%, 35%, 10% etc more on anything Lutnick says Canada makes “too much” of, despite oil, gas, and mined minerals being 80% of Canada’s exports to the U.S.at US consumption demand.
However, the Liberal party it remains populated with Climate Comrades who have drank the CO2 emissions Kool-aid. Mark Carney, now PM, is a WEF and CC religion Cardinal, and claims to be making Canada great as long as there is an emissions limit on the oil industry and total government control over any project that might emit CO2, might harm bears or whales, or be complained about by hereditary Indian leaders.
It’s truly a sad case of yesterday’s leaders trying to maintain power by political spin doctoring.
Carney carefully neglects the January report to The Privy Council. That report says in the near future many Canadians will be reduced to subsistence farming, fishing, and hunting for survival.
Likewise, when Trudeau went to visit Trump, Trump said he’s going to level the playing field with Canada with respect to tariffs. Trudeau said “That will be the end of Canada as a country.” To which Trump replied “Canada can become America’s 51st state, and you can be it’s governor.”
Of course the press turns this around as an insult to Trump, completely ignoring the fact that Trudeau crashed Canada’s economy.
Not Trashed the Economy
2014-2024 was roughly in line with other Big drop in 20-21 like others but a big rebound too
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG?end=2024&locations=CA&start=2014&view=chart
What I find amusing / sad / frustrating is now reading all these “revelations” about what an empty suit, a pluperfect narcissist, Trudeau actually was / is.
Rational observers all around the world were outing Trudeau’s inadequacies & unfitness for office from the get-go.
His main electoral appeals were having nice hair, being a drama coach, and a snowboard instructor.
Did I mention nice hair?
In short, in 2015 election he garnered huge followings in mature and young women who regard “celebrities” as having anything useful or substantial to offer in the running of western societies, economies, trade, military strategy, etc, etc
Hmmmm . . . I thought his main electoral appeal was his trophy wife, Sophie, frequently trotted out on his arm in high publicity outings.
See attached photo (image fair use, subject matter).
Love’s labours lost, they separated in late 2023.
The main appeal was his possible link to Fidel Castro. The left in Canada couldn’t contain themselves.
Power is an aphrodisiac. When did he start losing popularity?
In 2017 during his infamous India trip. This was part of the reason.
Justin Trudeau Bhangra Dance in India | Full Video
For the first time all Canadians could see what a preening, prancing idiot he truly was. It was at this point that jokes started making the rounds that his mother must have dropped him on his head too many times.
Well yes, and McKenna says in her book that Trudeau’s sole concern was that his public appearances were “performative”
The guy was a rank show poney, but he was the WEF / Liberals’ “useful idiot” so they kept trotting him out at every opportunity.
Tell me that ‘economic adviser’ Carney didn’t know every move the Liberals were making, and wholly approved
Now the back-tracking & denial is palpable.
(aided & abetted by a subservient media of course).
To the vast majority of politicians, like Trudeau, it’s about “the show”.
Trump learned his skills from show business too
What skills?
Trump learned his
skillsmannerisms from show business too.Any reasonably intelligent person, knowing the diverse philosophies of people who typically run for political office, and in times of smooth sailing….would like to make sure their politicians can’t actually change anything of significance. In that sense, those who voted for Trudeau’s party knew what they wanted. Unfortunately Trudeau was much more persuasive with regards to a drama teacher’s understanding of the world…. than originally anticipated.
So Gavin Newsom in a nutshell.
Only in part. Newsom is a genius compared to the perfect vaccums in the skulls of Justatwit and Climate Change Barbie. Like Biden, the real power lay with unelected party officials. In Canada’s case, Gerald Butts and Katie Telford. These two morons destroyed the McGuinty government in Ontario with their idiotic Green Energy Act. When Ontario failed so badly for Butts/Telford, they took their crooked con game up the road to the Ottawa federal Liberals to get Justatwit, Climate Change and Garden Gnome Barbies elected.
Butts now working with Carney’s missus in New York on more greenwashing con-jobs that tap into global tax flows.
Dang, I thought that without Turdeau in office, that maybe Butts’ consulting fees as a modern day Joseph Goebbels to WEF adherents had dried up.
You forgot him dressing up in a KKK robe…no, wait, That was our Governor of Virginia, Northam. But they both did blackface.
I guess she held the position for a while and delayed having Steven Guilbeault who is a convicted climate terrorist take over. (It must have hurt him more than her when they got rid of the carbon taxes)
Guilbeault has been shuffled off to be minister in charge of Canadian Culture and Languages….a portfolio where he can’t enrage every business owner and worker in Canada every news cycle…although he has recently been “assisting” the new ministers in his old lagoon.
But a week after taking the post, she attended COP21, where the Paris agreement – the first universal, legally binding treaty on climate – was signed.
Through what legal authority is the Paris agreement legally binding? It isn’t legally binding in the USA because it has never been ratified by the US Senate. It certainly hasn’t been legally binding in China or India. It may be legally binding in some countries, but only if those countries chose to abide by the Paris Agreement through their own legislatures.
Then President Obama worked very hard to make sure it wasn’t a Treaty, as he knew the Senate would never approve it. It is merely an Agreement.
An international agreement *IS* a “treaty,” or it has no legal effect.
The Paris Accord has no legal effect on anyone or anything. As Jim noted, it was set up that way by Obama. He wanted to avoid the embarrassment of the Kyoto Protocol.
Yes, and that’s what I was alluding to. The POTUS can’t enter into binding international agreements without ratification by the US Senate. He was pretending to be able to do what he has no authority to do by the “agreement” sleight of hand, and claim by his signature he could “commit” the US to what he, and only he, “agreed” to.
Complete BS. Where were the “No Kings” protesters then?!
The Paris agreement is not binding. Each nation decided what their own CO2 cuts would be and compliance is voluntary. Unlike Canada, China is achieving its Paris commitment – it pledged to make no cuts to emissions and instead to continue increasing them for 15 years.
Since the article is Canadia-specific, perhaps it’s legally binding there?
None whatsoever.The Liberal government took a number of voluntary actions to bring about compliance – universal carbon tax, Pacific coast tanker ban, killing pipeline projects. the Paris Accord has a goal which cannot be legally enforced on anyone – specifically to limit world temperature increase to less than two degrees Centigrade.
If anyone can think of anything Catherine McKenna achieved, please lets us know in the comments
________________________________________________________________________
If anyone can think of any problem caused by increasing CO2 in the air, please let us know in the comments
CO2 in air…
I once found I had pulse rate and breathing issues in tank I was inspecting, where the CO2 level was about 10,000 ppm on my monitor….Maybe mental clarity issues too…but I’ve noticed that at slightly elevated CO2 levels of about 650 ppm in the local pub too…
I have to mow the grass more often.
I have to mow the weeds more often.
A message to the climate bimbo
Oh, Canada
Our home and native land
Poutine and flannel
And back bacon are so grand
We see they Tim Hortons donuts rise
With a dozen coffee’s free
From the blue line
To the goal crease
We stand on guard for thee
Rush is our band
Caress Of Steel
That’s what we call it when we club a seal
That’s what we call it when we club a seal
According to the above article, this quote was taken from the referenced article in The Guardian:
“Tripling its capacity would remedy a problem for the industry: too much oil through too few pipelines meant oil sold at a discount to the rest of the world.”
No matter how many times I read that sentence, it makes no sense. But I repeat myself as it came from The Guardian.
“too much oil through too few pipelines”
I’ll attempt a fix: too few pipelines for all the oil
As I recall, oil was sent south via tanker-truck and because that is more costly than pipelines, the dollar return to the producer was lower.
Not actually. Canada has only one customer for its oil: the United States. It has no ability to ship oil anywhere else in the world. So, all of Canada’s oil is sold to US refiners at a severe discount. Canada’s oil is shipped primarily through pipelines, mostly to the US, and a small portion via TransMountain pipeline. None of the crude is shipped by truck. Some is shipped by rail t Ontario refineries.
This pipeline congestion and greater foreign access was to have been cleared up by the construction of three new pipeline projects: Northern Gateway; Keystone XL; and Canada East. Keystone was canceled by the malevolent Obama, while the other two were terminated by Justatwit and Climate Change Barbie. The damage these three morons have caused to the Canadian economy runs to the trillions of dollars.
and of course economic genius Trudeau told Germany when they came begging to buy their gas from Canada instead of Russia when Ukraine war started that he could see that “there’s no business case” for Canada.
And none of the Liberals including his economic adviser Carney publicly disagreed with him.
“too few pipelines for all the oil” . . . how does that result in oil being sold at a discount? Wouldn’t “too few pipeline” restrict supply, thus raising prices, and/or as you state mean that a great percentage of oil had to be transported by more expensive means, such a tanker truck???
If you assert that the cost of various means of transportation are not folded into a product’s retail sales price, and thus must reduce the producer and distributor net profits, you’re dreaming.
Yes, she had death threats. That is a serious crime in Canada. I recall no prosecution.
We are to believe that police did not investigate a criminal death threat against a minister of the Crown? Maybe she got a mean tweet?
Long before the end of his term in office, Liberal cabinet ministers were hiding from all public appearances. There was an episode in Belleville where Trudeau showed up for a public fundraiser in summer 2021. He was greeted by an angry mob throwing rocks. After that, all of them hid from the public. It was then abundantly clear that ALL of small-town Canada hated the Trudeau Liberals.
“If anyone can think of anything Catherine McKenna achieved, please lets us know in the comments.”
Hmm maybe dying her hair in a fairly popular colour? …unless it’s natural which honestly does not make any difference…
She helped to establish a great meme…
Climate Barbie 😄😆😅🤣😂
Carney did not kill off the carbon (dioxide) tax altogether. As adviser to Trudeau he wanted the tax increased and hidden so the public wouldn’t be aware of how much it was costing them and thus oppose it. The Conservative opposition party campaigned on killing the tax which was a very popular idea, so Carney stole that and killed it off to consumers, but then just added it to industry who passed it on to us so we’re still paying it, we just don’t see it any more.
She could make the crustiest engineers laugh with her unimaginably silly pronouncements about science, energy usage, technical processes, manufacturing and how reducing CO2 from many processes could be done so simply. She truly was our climate Barbie.
She became an instant expert. At the Paris conference she made a motion to lower the critical temperature increase from 2.0 deg to 1.5 deg, not that she knew that number came from an economist not science.
Someone asked why Canada is concerned about climate change.
The leaders know it is a scam. They declared a “climate crisis” to divert attention from the ballooning DEBT. Then they doubled it by bowing to Fauci and the covid scam.