Canadian green activist named environment minister

Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau has appointed a former Greenpeace Canada manager to lead the country's efforts to address climate change.

Steven Guilbeault, previously Canada's minister of heritage and a Liberal member of Parliament since 2019, today was sworn in to his new role as minister of environment and climate change. The swearing in moves Canada closer to finalizing its Clean Fuel Standard as the ministry staff end its "caretaker" roles following the recent elections and resume operations under new leadership.

Canada's cabinet shake-up follows a snap September election that saw Trudeau's Liberal party maintain a majority but fall short of the numbers needed to govern with control of Parliament.

The election instead set the stage for the change in cabinet as two of the party's ministers — for Fisheries, Oceans and the Canadian Coast Guard and for rural economic development — lost their seats. Former environment minister Jonathan Wilkinson was sworn in as minister of natural resources.

Guilbeault, an ecologist who worked with Greenpeace Canada and co-founded Quebec environmental organization Equiterre, assumes his new role on the eve of the COP 26 climate talks in Glasgow, Scotland. He has previously worked as a strategic adviser on renewable fuels and climate issues, and described himself as a "radical pragmatist" in his 2019 campaign.

He will now oversee a ministry waiting to finalize Canada's Clean Fuel Standard, a low-carbon fuel mandate to begin trading in early 2023. The final regulations are due by the end of this year.

Both changes in roles were significant, said Ian Thomson, president of industry group Advanced Biofuels Canada. Wilkinson will lead a ministry that has in the past been considered a roadblock for decarbonization policies, and Guilbeault shows a seriousness about environmental programs that critics had questioned, he said.

"We understand that, during the campaign, the 'all talk, no walk' on the Liberal's climate policies stung them internally," Thomson said. "They are coming into this new sitting of Parliament intent on shedding that label."

By Elliott Blackburn