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The Carney government recently rolled out Powering Canada Strong: A National Strategy for an Electrified Canadian Economy, a grand strategy for Canada’s power systems. The new strategy, to be positive about things, has a lot of (conceptually) good things in it.
The basic premise is that, in the future, Canada will need to generate a lot more electric power—twice as much as today, by 2050—to meet the demand of a growing population with growing electricity and electricity-hungry computational needs. And in all likelihood, the future is likely electric. More of the things modern economies do are driven by computerization and, more recently, big data and big AI, which consume a lot of electric power.
Powering Canada, however, doesn’t stop with that big picture of producing more “abundant, affordable, and reliable” electricity. It also aims to spread electrification throughout the economy and calls for replacing pretty much any and all power used by Canadians that isn’t suitably “decarbonized,” to use the latest buzz-term. That is to say, Powering Canada seeks to be largely rid of power based on burning hydrocarbons, which mainly occurs in Canada in transportation and powering buildings (water heating, HVAC, etc.). In plain language, this means a world powered by electricity derived almost exclusively from low- or no-carbon sources of nuclear, hydro, wind and solar power, with some natural gas allowed as a bridge fuel to the all-electric “net-zero 2050” Canada of tomorrow.
Much of the strategy is undefined—such as how, exactly, Canada will double electricity production in 25 years, given that despite a lot of empty talk Canada still seems unable to build large things. And other parts of Powering Canada suggest government has failed to learn from past failures.
One example of this failure to learn is Powering Canada’s plan to “take additional action on energy-saving retrofits for up to one million households across Canada through a combination of financing, grants, and complementary measures.” Some examples given are “enabling households to electrify home heating and cooling through transition from propane, oil, and electric baseboard heating to heat pumps.” This means, in practice, that consumers will face economic incentives to accept the electrification of various household systems for HVAC, cooking, etc.—whether they like it or not. But has this worked in the past?
According to a 2025 study (Papineau, et al.), which looked at the performance of similar energy conservation efforts in Medicine Hat, Alberta, from 2008 to 2012, in home retrofit programs of the time, whole-house energy consumption fell by about 15 per cent (on average) for folks who participated in retrofit activities. Almost all the energy savings came from reduced natural gas consumption, which declined by 21 per cent for up to 10 years, whereas electricity use declined by less than 5 per cent. Complete home envelope retrofits, the most ambitious type, reduced natural gas and total energy consumption by 35 per cent and 25 per cent, respectively. These reductions, while non-trivial, were half or less of what was predicted for the program. Worse, the program generated “regressive outcomes”—that’s economic speak for hurting the economically worse off more than those better off, primarily benefiting middle-wealth households rather than their lower-income neighbours.
These rare explicit elements of Powering Canada, along with EV promotion and all the rest, are not in the economic interests and security of Canadians. Rather, it’s in service of what has become the central operating raison d’etre of Canada—achieving the government’s goal of making Canada “carbon neutral” or “greenhouse gas neutral” by 2050. This goal, one being walked away from by some of the world’s largest-emitting countries, still drives much of Canadian public policy.
Despite having some good ideas, and being based in a reality that the future is electric, Powering Canada Strong seems to be more about increasing government economic power at the expense of energy consumers’ economic power. Three examples are the essential federalization and monopolization-through-regulation of all electrical energy production and use in Canada (formerly a provincial responsibility); a willingness to nudge, cajole or regulate Canadians into changing the way they want to power their lives in service to government’s priorities; and a devotion to Canada’s increasingly untenable goal of “net-zero” by 2050 that could leave future Canadians impoverished and energy-deficient.
Hopefully, as Powering Canada moves into implementation, policymakers will work its troubling elements out of the strategy, and Canadians will maintain greater control over their energy choices—choices that, increasingly, are how we choose to live our lives.
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COMMENTARY: Here’s the Major Problem With Canada’s New Electric Everything Strategy – Fraser Institute