Over 300 Canadian musicians and artists campaigned to keep Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives from forming government during Canada’s 45th federal election, using their far-reaching platforms to urge Canadians to stop Pierre Poilievre and in many cases to vote for you and the Liberal Party. 

Canadians from coast to coast to coast were buoyed and hopeful at the prospect of a Prime Minister who ostensibly knows more about climate change than many of his global peers, is an expert on climate and energy economics, and perhaps most promising, has been hailed as an international leader on climate change. 

You once pointed out that the world would need to leave the vast majority of fossil fuel reserves in the ground if we were serious about holding the increase in the planet below two degrees. We agree with this sentiment wholeheartedly.

It is thus with deep disappointment that we write today to address recent policy decisions and announcements that run counter to your long standing commitment to climate leadership and advocacy, especially in the event of unprecedented wildfires ravaging Canada from coast to coast to coast, made worse and more likely by climate change. 

Your government’s mandate letter and Throne Speech were absent of meaningful climate action, Indigenous sovereignty and reconciliation, and investment in culture.

To add insult to injury, you are considering oil and gas projects under the banner of “nation building” and proposing to expedite these national interest projects under the newly passed Bill C-5's controversial Building Canada Act. We fail to understand how doubling down on the drivers of the catastrophic impacts of climate change will help our nation prosper, when we both know that they will come at a great cost to Canadians now, and in the future. 

Bill C-5 sets a dangerous precedent. It allows Cabinet to pre-approve major resource extraction projects first, and then go through a cursory, shortened legislative and regulatory approval process after. This means that the federal government could pre-approve a project without fully understanding its environmental impacts, and undermine Indigenous Peoples’ right to free, prior and informed consent.  

This is not the progressive agenda Canadians voted for. This is not bold leadership on such  pressing issues. Increasingly this is a betrayal.

Millions of Canadians—including those who have long supported the NDP or Green Party—chose to vote strategically for the Liberal Party in good faith. We did so not out of blind loyalty, but because you offered a vision of pragmatic progress and climate leadership and the threat of a Pierre Poilievre Conservative government was one we took seriously.  Progressive voters across the country put their trust in you, but that trust is now in jeopardy.

We call on you to demonstrate real leadership by making Climate, Reconciliation, and Culture central to your government's mission. They are an integral part of addressing the affordability crisis. Specifically, we urge you to:

• Commit to a rapid, just transition away from fossil fuels, prohibiting new oil and gas projects from being considered under Bill C-5 and the Building Canada Act

• Commit to a public-led green economy. This includes robust, fully funded and ambitious Youth Climate Corps, an East-West electricity grid powered by renewables and a green public housing program.

• Centre Indigenous sovereignty in reconciliation and environmental planning, with full respect for UNDRIP, including in the process of enacting any legislation focused on national interest projects

• Invest in arts, culture, and civil society as critical pillars of a democratic and resilient Canada. This includes a commitment to a 1% allocation of the federal budget (not GDP) to Arts and Culture through increases to both the Canada Council for the Arts and the Department of Canadian Heritage. This includes increasing funding to the CBC to bring it in line with other national public broadcasters.

• Restore public trust by governing with the same progressive values you campaigned on. This includes cancelling Canada’s plans to balloon its military budget and an immediate two way arms embargo on Israel. We want a foreign policy based on diplomacy and peace building.

Canada is burning, and your mandate barely acknowledges the smoke. This country deserves more than rhetorical nods—we deserve measurable, structural commitments. The time for capitulating to the pressures of the oil and gas industry and loud and aggressive right wing extremists, including some Premiers of some provinces, needs to end. We need courage. We need vision. We need to proceed with attention to the coming generations. We need you to pick a path.

Music comes from a place of deep love, and as musicians, we want to use the power of music to help bring our country together in this time of poly crises. We want to use the power of music to work for peace and justice around the world.

We want art, culture and music to unite us and to help us tap into the abundance of creativity, imagination, and ingenuity we have as a country so we can invest in rebuilding crumbling infrastructure, addressing the climate emergency and making a more equitable Canada.