LILLEY: Mark Carney's climate hypocrisy runs as deep as a coal mine

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You likely knew that climate guru Mark Carney was a jet setter with a huge carbon footprint, but did you know he chairs a company that keeps America’s coal industry running?

Carney is the chair of Brookfield Asset Management, a multibillion firm that loves to brag about their green investing strategy. The company just announced plans to invest £1 billion in Britain’s solar industry over the next decade, a move that comes just after the firm spent $2.3 billion to buy up British wind farms.

Brookfield is a signatory to the Net Zero Asset Management Initiative which seeks to “support the goal of net zero greenhouse gas (‘GHG’) emissions by 2050.” Carney himself issued a statement in September 2022 as co-chair of the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero stating that “there is no rationale for financing new coal projects.”

“Coal is the single largest source of global carbon emissions, and power generation from coal has rebounded to historically high levels, far off the path to net zero consistent with limiting global temperature increases to 1.5C,” the statement read.

And yet here is Carney and Brookfield owning Rockwood, an insurance firm that provides an array of products for mining from general liability to pollution with a specialization in workers’ compensation risks.

These mines can’t operate without insurance. Carney and Brookfield say such mines shouldn’t exist and we shouldn’t be using coal and yet … they are the owners of the insurance firm.

I have no problem with Rockwood existing, I have no problem with coal mining existing, but I’m not Carney and Brookfield preaching one thing from their ivory towers while letting Rockwood add to their bottom line.

Carney is a hypocrite, but then again, he’s hanging out with and advising Justin Trudeau so that shouldn’t come as a surprise.

If you missed the news, Carney was appointed to be an advisor to Trudeau, not in his role as prime minister but his role as Liberal leader. Having Carney advise the party instead of the government ensures that he isn’t subject to all those pesky things like conflict of interest rules and regulations.

In addition to advising the Trudeau Liberals, Carney remains a finance advisor to the British government. He’s also on an advisory board for a finance firm named PIMCO. In addition, he is a board member at online payments firm Stripe, a board member for Bloomberg Philanthropies, he is the United Nations Special Envoy on Climate Action and Finance, and a board member of the World Economic Forum.

All of this on top of his role as chair and head of Transition Investing at Brookfield.

All these jobs, all these roles, meetings all over the globe. He has that in common with Trudeau, a man who lectures the rest of us about reducing our carbon footprint, whose government warns about family vacations burning up the planet but who flew 92,000 km this past summer.

Oh, and what is Carney advising Trudeau on? He is chair of the Leader’s Task Force on Economic Growth.

That appointment was made in September. In October, Brookfield announced they were moving their head office to New York City.

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Supporters of Trudeau, and defenders of Carney and Brookfield claim this isn’t really a significant move. If it wasn’t, the company wouldn’t be doing it, they wouldn’t have had board meetings about it, they wouldn’t have issued a press release and guidance to markets.

The first public piece of advice from Trudeau’s advisor on economic growth is to tell companies to move stateside.

Maybe we can get a statement on the coal business and Canada’s massive exports of coal to China.

Trudeau and Carney deserve each other, but Canada deserves better leadership than either one of them. It’s time to move past leaders who demand one thing for the public, sacrifice in the name of climate let’s say, while living the high life and ignoring their own advice.

Carney isn’t the saviour of Canada or the Liberal Party, he’s more of the same.

blilley@postmedia.com