Environment and Climate Change Canada just issued a new report Canada’s Changing Climate Report 2026 (CCCR2026). It’s an update to the April 1, 2019, CCCR2019 version, which led to the declaration of a climate emergency in Canada in June of that year.Since 2019, there have been serious course corrections in the world of climate science that are not reflected in the new report. Several of these dramatic corrections have occurred in just the past year.I suspect this may be the reason why the report was released quietly, with no fanfare or press conference, on the Thursday evening before the Labour Day long weekend.Rather than a press conference, the climate activist groups and media made a bit of noise, with headlines clamouring that CCCR2026 showed that climate change was “irreversible” and … “we’re all gonna die” themes … unless we electrify everything instead of using fossil fuels.The authors of CCCR2026 had apparently laboured over the 1500-page report for the past three years; yet in the space of the past year, three main pillars of the climate catastrophe thesis have been swept away by the scientific community itself. One of these key changes occurred in April; thus, there was barely time to fix up such a complex report to reflect the fact that the climate catastrophe scenarios — typically touted as the “business-as-usual” case — have been declared “implausible” by the official climate scenario modelling group (though the implausible nature of these scenarios has been known since 2017).The implausible scenarios were known by monikers such as RCP 8.5, SSP5-8.5, and SSP3-7.0. RCP stands for “Representative Concentration Pathway,” or the amount of carbon dioxide concentration and its computer-modelled impact on warming. SSP5-8.5 is a version of that but with inputs known as “Shared Socio-economic Pathways,” which incorporated various socio-economic factors and used updated climate models. While SSP3-7.0 incorporated aspects of regional rivalry and nationalism..For the purposes of this plain language article, we can consider that all three of them provided scary, high temperature outcomes, but all three were implausible. Yet, RCP 8.5, the best known in science circles, was used in thousands of peer-reviewed papers to make the case for net-zero style climate targets or risk a “burnt-to-a-crisp” planet. Peer-reviewed papers are still being pumped out using these implausible scenarios. The full course correction will take years.Especially when Canada’s official department, Environment and Climate Change Canada, continues to use implausible scenarios to scare the public — and worse — to embed nonsensical parameters through government policy at federal, provincial, and municipal levels.For example, if a city wants to build infrastructure meant to last past 2050, according to Infrastructure Canada, they must follow the ‘climate lens’ guide, which requires them to use planning and build-out parameters in alignment with the implausible RCP 8.5.This drives up the costs significantly! Sadly, these implausible climate catastrophe scenarios are embedded everywhere in the most important aspects of your personal life and the economy of our country.Climate activists and even the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions have argued there are huge economic costs to not mitigating climate change (i.e. by continuing to use fossil fuels). The central banks of the Network for Greening the Financial System (NGFS) relied on a climate economics paper known as Kotz et al. (2024). This paper predicted climate change would cost $38 trillion a year by 2049. This paper was hugely popular and accessed over 300,000 times! Kotz et al. was finally formally retracted in December of 2025, filled with flaws that sharp-eyed observers had noted shortly after its publication. But apparently because it reinforced the net zero banking case, banks continued using it (and some may even still use it!) for assessing climate risk.That means, if you are an energy, mining, or other resource company, the banking sector would have seen you as a planet killer and might have upped the rates on finance, declined to serve your company unless you had a full-on net zero plan. Other ‘ESG consultants’ may have twisted your arm to finance wind and solar farms to offset your planetary exposure — thus adding to the costs of operation and leading you away from your core business. All completely unnecessary..But this net zero obsession is still firmly embedded in banks like RBC, which were very enthusiastic in their Climate Action 2026 Report in January this year, that non-net zero-compliant customers might just be dropped. RBC is the biggest bank in Canada, and one of the biggest in the world. It is embedding economically destructive and prejudicial policies based on false and misleading climate scenarios and a retracted climate economic report in its customer relations. This is contrary to Canada’s Bank Act.Apply this thinking on a personal level. Just imagine when you go to renew your mortgage, what if your bank requires you to go net zero with a heat pump, instead of your installed natural gas heater. That would also be contrary to Canada’s Bank Act, but who is aware of that, and why would a bank coerce you into something make-believe about climate change? You being forced to change your furnace for a heat pump will not stop global warming — but the new CCCR2026, still using the implausible scenarios, will justify the climate overlords to continue to coerce you on this destructive net zero path.Furthermore, as the Trump administration in the US has abandoned all Paris Agreement and climate-related policies and agreements, Canada’s persistence in using implausible climate catastrophe scenarios to set public policy and push net zero will continue to be a barrier to fruitful negotiations.CCCR2026 should be withdrawn and rewritten to remove any reference to SSP3-7.0, SSP5-8.5, or RCP 8.5 and to adjust the scientific content accordingly.If you’d like to understand more about the problems with CCCR2026, I put together a short video explainer for the Friends of Science Society, where I am the Communications Manager, Canada’s Changing Climate Report 2026 - At First Glance: Anomalies – and why it matters for Canada-US trade.Environment and Climate Change Canada. (2026). Report Summary. In Canada’s Changing Climate Report 2026. (pp.1328-1448). Government of Canada. https://publications.gc.ca/pub?id=9.964671&sl=0.
