With Export Development Canada set to announce its new climate targets any day, Above Ground and over one hundred civil society organizations are calling on Ottawa to follow the example set by the United Kingdom and immediately order EDC to align its business with Canada’s climate obligations.
Canada’s human rights performance is up for review by the UN Human Rights Committee. The committee should ask Canada to explain how it squares its duty to protect the right to life with its policies favouring expanded fossil fuel production in a world wracked by climate change, we argue in a submission with the Center for International Environmental Law.
Export credit agencies and the governments that oversee them could be in violation of their international legal obligations if they do not swiftly reduce their fossil fuel finance, according to a legal opinion published today.
Last month over 50 civil society organizations joined us in calling for Ottawa to cut off Export Development Canada’s enormous flow of public financial support to an industry fuelling the climate crisis.
Our brief to the parliamentary committees studying Ottawa’s COVID-19 economic response highlights the role of Canada’s export bank in bailing out fossil fuel producers, and makes recommendations to align the government’s response with its climate commitments.
While other public institutions pull out of fossil fuels, Canada’s export credit agency continues to heavily support oil companies ramping up production in one of the world’s most emissions-intensive oil fields.
Last fall we wrote to Canada’s environment minister urging that the government include in its review of fossil fuel subsidies the billions in support it provides to oil and gas companies each year through Export Development Canada (EDC). We have now received confirmation that “EDC has been included as a part of this review.”