Between 2020 and 2022, Canada provided more public finance for fossil fuels than any other G20 country. Nearly all of it was provided by Crown corporation Export Development Canada (EDC), whose support for oil and gas companies averaged $10.9 billion a year.
In 2021 Canada made an international pledge to end some of its public finance for fossil fuels: new support for “unabated” fossil fuel development overseas.
A year later, Ottawa released “guidelines” specifying which types of support and industry activities it considers to fall under the scope of its commitment. Under these rules, since 2023 government bodies including EDC should provide no new support outside Canada for fossil fuel extraction, production, transportation, refining, or marketing, or for “unabated” fossil fuel power generation, with some exceptions. These exceptions are complex, and spelled out in detail in the guidelines.
Though this falls short of a full ban on fossil fuel finance, we nonetheless welcomed these rules because, if applied with reason, they imply an end to public finance for most fossil fuel activities overseas.
But the rules haven’t been written into law. They are thus not binding on EDC or the government, and they don’t specify whether or how the government will monitor compliance.
To address these weaknesses, Above Ground engaged the Environmental Law Centre at the University of Victoria to develop a model regulation under the Export Development Act that would make the guidelines binding. This model regulation also extends the same rules to EDC’s support for fossil fuels in Canada, which constitutes the bulk of the agency’s fossil fuel finance.
Ottawa has yet to set any limits on EDC’s domestic fossil fuel finance, though it has promised to “develop a plan” to phase it out. Ideally, it would mandate a rapid end to EDC support for any fossil fuel activities, without exceptions. But by setting the same restrictions on EDC’s domestic finance as it has on international finance, the government would nonetheless be taking a meaningful stride in the right direction.
Read the model regulation: