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<\/p>\nIn 2021, Canada committed to banning thermal coal exports by 2030.<\/p>\n
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Environment Minister Julie Dabrusin \u2014 who was in Montreal Thursday for the Canada-EU summit and was not made available for questions on the audit \u2014 said in a media statement Canada was \u201cpausing\u201d its work.<\/p>\n
Liberal MP Wade Grant, Dabrusin\u2019s parliamentary secretary, was put forward Thursday to respond to journalists\u2019 questions on the report, along with five other ministers who couldn\u2019t or wouldn\u2019t speak to the decision to stop the work.<\/p>\n
Pressed on whether Canada is still committed to phasing out thermal coal exports by 2030, Grant said it\u2019s \u201csomething (the government) will look at.\u201d<\/p>\n
Keean Nembhard, Dabrusin\u2019s press secretary, said that in 2024, the previous government paused efforts to implement the thermal coal export ban.<\/p>\n
\u201cCanada\u2019s new government is assessing current policies against the backdrop of ongoing energy availability, affordability, security pressures, and Canada\u2019s wider climate ambitions,\u201d said Nembhard.<\/p>\n
The previous government references the Liberal government under former prime minister Justin Trudeau, in which Dabrusin served as a parliamentary secretary, including to the minister of environment.<\/p>\n
Thursday\u2019s audit found that while Environment Canada worked for three years to find a way to enforce the ban, that work stopped altogether in November 2024 after lobbying from the coal industry.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe department did not produce evidence of an official direction to discontinue work on the ban in 2024,\u201d the audit said.<\/p>\n
Taking questions from reporters Thursday, both Hogan and deputy auditor general Andrew Hayes said that they\u2019d never seen any department do anything similar in their years at the Office of the Auditor General.<\/p>\n
\u201cIndeed, what we would have expected to see is that the department had documented its analysis that it would have provided to decision-makers, and that there would have been a paper trail back from decision-makers to confirm that work should stop,\u201d Hayes said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t remember a time in the last 20 years where I\u2019ve seen work stop like that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Even the work to enforce the ban was scaled down before Ottawa ultimately gave up on it.<\/p>\n
The audit found that between October 2021 and February 2024, Environment Canada officials were trying to use existing laws to enforce the export ban \u2014 including by regulating it as a toxic substance, similarly to what Ottawa is doing now with single-use plastics.<\/p>\n
The audit said that by February 2024, those efforts shifted to non-regulatory approaches, including \u201cvoluntary measures,\u201d though it doesn\u2019t say exactly what those measures were.<\/p>\n
The decision to stop the work wasn\u2019t formalized until August 2025, when the federal government was looking for cost-saving measures, said the audit. Still, Ottawa didn\u2019t tell the public.<\/p>\n
\u201cHowever, we also found no clear records to show that the department had provided the minister with an assessment of the implications of stopping all work on the export ban,\u201d the audit report said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile the commitment had been announced internationally and noted in multiple federal strategies, the work on the ban was stopped with no public announcement.\u201d<\/p>\n
Thermal coal exports were higher in 2025 than they were in 2021, the audit report says.<\/p>\n
The report criticized the government\u2019s secrecy on the file.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe lack of public information and updates on the government\u2019s current approach is concerning,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n
\u201cTransparency in decision making provides certainty and enables interested parties, such as provincial and territorial governments, coal mining companies, transportation authorities, shipping terminals, and the labour force to contribute to a just transition.\u201d<\/p>\n
The report said 61 per cent of thermal coal shipped from Canadian ports in 2025 came up from the United States, largely from Washington, Oregon and California.<\/p>\n
The American mines send it by train north to shipping terminals in British Columbia, mainly because regulations in the U.S. make it challenging to build export infrastructure along the Pacific coast to ship to Asian markets.<\/p>\n
Former B.C. premier David Eby suggested Ottawa could use Canada\u2019s role in facilitating exports of U.S. thermal coal as leverage in trade negotiations.<\/p>\n
In August, Eby \u2014 apparently unaware Ottawa already had abandoned the work \u2014 told reporters the federal government should move faster to phase out exports of thermal coal.<\/p>\n
Efforts to reach Eby, who was defeated recently in a snap election he called, were unsuccessful on Thursday.<\/p>\n
The reports from the auditor general\u2019s office also looked into Global Affairs Canada\u2019s role in overseeing $16 billion in commitments to international coal transition programs.<\/p>\n
Canada committed $15 million to the Women-Led Coal Transition Mechanism, and another $1 billion in low-interest loans to the Climate Investment Funds\u2019 Accelerating Coal Transition investment program, which is jointly funded by Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany and Denmark. That $1-billion investment made up 42 per cent of the program\u2019s funding, the audit found.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor Global Affairs Canada, this contribution was also one of the department\u2019s single largest project investments ever made,\u201d the report said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe program finances country-led investment plans with projects designed to accelerate coal retirement, scale up clean energy alternatives, and mitigate socio\u2011economic impacts on affected workers and communities. Projects are expected to continue up to 2047.\u201d<\/p>\n
The audit reported Environment Canada never informed Global Affairs Canada of the decision to stop work in November 2024.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe found that Global Affairs Canada was involved in the work on the thermal coal export ban only at the request of Environment and Climate Change Canada,\u201d the report said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn accordance with its responsibilities for foreign affairs and trade policy, Global Affairs Canada provided information on the trade risks associated with potential implementation options for a thermal coal export ban.\u201d<\/p>\n
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 29, 2026.<\/p>\n
Nick Murray, The Canadian Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In 2021, Canada committed to banning thermal coal exports by 2030. Environment Minister Julie Dabrusin \u2014 who was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":951338,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194295],"tags":[879,49,48,2467,2461,2468,2460,2462,2463,44,2464,20739,2465,2466,82],"class_list":["post-951337","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ottawa","tag-breaking-news","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-central-vancouver-island","tag-nanaimo","tag-nanaimo-breaking-news","tag-nanaimo-news","tag-nanaimo-news-now","tag-nanaimonewsnow","tag-news","tag-oceanside","tag-ottawa","tag-parksville","tag-qualicum","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/951337","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=951337"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/951337\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/951338"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=951337"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=951337"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=951337"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}